Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Yorkshire Regional Land Drainage Committee

Dr. Marshall: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whom he has appointed to the membership of the Yorkshire Regional Land Drainage Committee.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mrs. Peggy Fenner): My right hon. Friend has appointed Major A. T. Bourne-Arton (Chairman), Mr. J. C. Cooke, Mr. J. P. Coverdale and Mr. A. L. West.

Dr. Marshall: Is it not the case that the chairman of the committee is a former Conservative Member of this House, and Mr. Cooke is a Conservative member of the North Yorkshire County Council, while neither of the other two gentlemen mentioned has any connection with the Labour Party? Is it not clear that the Minister is using these appointments for party political purposes?

Mrs. Fenner: No, indeed that is not so. The appointees have qualifications that are especially applicable. I was about to assure the hon. Gentleman that Mr. West is Chairman of the Cottingham IDB, Mr. Cooke is the Vice-Chairman of the Went IDB and Mr. Coverdale, in addition to being Chairman of the River Foss IDB, is also an active member of the Association of Drainage Authorities.

Mr. Farr: Will my hon. Friend say whether our membership of the EEC will

in any way affect the future appointment of members to drainage committees? Is there likely to be a co-ordinated EEC policy on the question of drainage rights?

Mrs. Fenner: My answer to the first part of my hon. Friend's questions is "No". To that second, it should be understood that drainage forms part of the schemes within the Community.

Food Prices

Mr. Skinner: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what has been the percentage increase in food prices since June 1970.

Mr. Thomas Cox: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what has been the percentage increase in food prices since June 1970.

Mr. Carter: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by how much the cost of food has risen since 18th June 1970.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Joseph Godber): Between 16th June 1970 and 13th November 1973, the latest date for which information is available, the food index rose by 46·2 per cent.

Mr. Skinner: Is the Minister aware that the latest increased figures are of an order of 50 per cent.? The reason why the right hon. Gentleman will not announce the percentage increase to the House today is that he is frightened to do so. He is waiting for the House to rise before the announcement is made. The right hon. Gentleman cannot blame this sort of price increase on the miners. He should tell his right hon. Friends that when we hear, this winter, about pensioners starving, we should have no more of this talk, as on the last occasion of the miners' industrial action, that pensioners are starving because of lack of heat. They are starving because they cannot buy enough food.

Mr. Godber: Seldom have I heard a greater distortion of the facts. Certainly the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) would never frighten me away from this House, nor would any of his hon. Friends. I find that his analysis of the situation is not borne out


by the papers today. I was rather interested in the quotation from today's Daily Mirror, which the hon. Member may have seen. It says:
The survey … certainly does not give a picture of housewives struggling to make ends meet by buying cheaper foods.
It shows that earnings have gone up again substantially more than retail prices in this period.

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: Is my right hon. Friend familiar with the blatantly misleading and factually incorrect leaflet which has been distributed by the Greater London Co-operative Society? Will he refute, in particular, three of the incorrect statements in that leaflet? The first is that food prices have risen due to profits made by manufacturers; the second, that the Government have imposed taxes on food; and the third, that the Government have withdrawn subsidies. Is my right hon. Friend aware that a widespread survey carried out by Which? shows that the Co-op was neither cheaper nor offered better value in quality than any other store?

Mr. Godber: I have seen the leaflet to which my hon. Friends refers. It is true that it is a completely inaccurate document in all the respects to which she refers. It is an utter distortion of the truth, and I am glad to have this opportunity of saying so.

Mr. Cox: Is not the Minister aware that even the figures he has announced today will pale into insignificance as the new figures are announced in the coming months as a result of Government policy? Is he further aware that while he and his colleagues prance around this country blaming everyone for our problems rather than admit their own incompetence prices go up? Will he tell the House when, at long last, the Government will take action against prices, either by giving teeth to the Price Commission or by introducing subsidies on key foods?

Mr. Godber: Again, this is completely inaccurate, and the hon. Member knows it. The facts are, as I have stated in the House many times, that the rises are due to world conditions, which cannot be denied. Those are the facts which I have given many times. I have said again and again that world food prices have risen. In the last three and half years since this Government took office, world food

prices have risen by 77 per cent. During the six years that the Labour Party were in office world food prices rose by 6 per cent., but the price of food rose a great deal more than that.

Mr. Ralph Howell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the country as a whole is spending only 19 per cent. of its income on food? Is he further aware that this is the lowest figure we have ever spent, and lower than in any other country in Europe?

Mr. Godber: It is true that the percentage of income which the average earner and the pensioner as well spends on food as a proportion of income has been going down steadily the whole time and that it is now at a lower figure than at any time previously. This means that the purchasing power, in terms of food, is substantially better, even in the present situation, than it was when the Labour Government left office.

Mr. Carter: In spite of what has been said on the subjects of price controls and food subsidies, is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that these measures could have brought industrial peace this winter? Would that not have been a very small price for the Government to pay in the end?

Mr. Godber: I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's view and I wish I could agree with it, but I cannot. The cost of any attempt to have held prices of food would have been so vast that it would have meant enormous increases in taxation. Indeed, over the last year food prices have gone up by an extent that would have meant another £1,500 million in taxes to equate that rise. If the hon. Gentleman suggests that this would have held the situation and been more than a mere palliative, he is deceiving himself. The Government, under phase 3, provided for threshold arrangements which will be triggered off as and when the retail price index rises above 7 per cent. That should give considerable help to the workers concerned.

Mr. Body: Wheat is a key commodity in world prices. As we have been told repeatedly throughout this year that the world price for wheat is much higher than the EEC's price, why is it that right up until August this year the Community had to impose a levy upon imported


wheat? Even in March the levy was over £20 a ton.

Mr. Godber: My hon. Friend is aware that while the world price is below the Community price the levies operate, but immediately the world price reaches the Community price the levies cease to operate. This is the function which operates within the Community and my hon. Friend is well aware of it. At present, no levies are operating because the world price is above the Community price.

Mr. David Clark: The right hon. Gentleman earlier called the Daily Mirror's report on the national food survey to his defence. Will he read the rest of the report, which shows that we are eating less beef, lamb and pork than during rationing?

Mr. Godber: We have discussed this matter many times. Perhaps I can explain it to the hon. Gentleman once more. The national food survey does not give the total consumption of meat. It gives the figures of food moving into consumption, which is the total figure. It may be of interest to the hon. Gentleman to know the figures compared with those of the rationing period. The total consumption of meat at present is 26·88 oz per head per week, compared with 19·37 oz under rationing. That is the true comparison. Whilst it is true that this year, particularly in the first half, meat consumption went down because of shortage of supplies, of which we all knew, it has risen again now, and there are good supplies in the shops.

Mr. Spearing: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what elements of cost increases will occur on corned beef, tinned fish and tinned fruit imported from Commonwealth countries as a result of new EEC tariff arrangements coming into force on 1st January 1974.

Mrs. Fenner: Adjustments to the tariff on corned beef are made at the beginning of the beef marketing year in April. Supplies of canned fish and canned fruit from the non-associable Commonwealth will face the first step towards the CCT on 1st January. Supplies from the developing Commonwealth which have been offered association will continue duty free. Tariff changes are not necessarily

reflected in retail prices; however, it is estimated that all the tariff changes due to take place on 1st January 1974 will result in an increase of only between ¼ per cent. and ½ per cent. on the retail food price index next year.

Mr. Spearing: Will the hon. Lady explain why she reverts to a percentage figure? Is she not aware that the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry quoted the figure last Monday as being between £20 million and £40 million? Does the hon. Lady not agree that that is the effective increase in prices for next year, which has nothing to do with world prices but is a tax on food coming into the country, the results of which will not even stay here for expenditure but will go direct to Brussels?

Mrs. Fenner: But the results of which were estimated to be 2 per cent. per annum during the transitional period by both the Labour Government and the present Government in their negotiations to join the EEC.

Mr. Marten: Will my hon. Friend, for the education of all of us, publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT exactly how she arrived at the figure she gave, so that we can check it and compare it with the figures that other people have got? Secondly, on the question of food prices generally, is it not true that the subsidy on sugar was removed this year and that from 1st January we could have quite a lot of taxes on foods? I hope that the Government will publish particulars of these taxes on food.

Mrs. Fenner: The answer to my hon. Friend's second question is, "Yes". The sugar subsidy was introduced last spring. It was going to be removed at the end of December last year, but because we were in the period of freeze in the first stage of the counter-inflation measures it was eventually phased out.
My hon. Friend also asked me to publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT how we arrived at the figure I gave. I remind him that in my main answer, before pointing out that this would result in an increase of only between ¼ per cent. and ½ per cent. next year, I said that tariff changes are not necessarily reflected in retail prices. It is thus very difficult to state how we did arrive at the conclusion


I have given the House, but I shall attempt to produce our reasons in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Fernyhough: Does the hon. Lady not think it rather ironic that this Government have become party to a treaty that will increase food prices by between £20 million and £40 million in the year beginning 1st January when, at the same time, millions of workers are going to have their wages substantially reduced because of part-time work? Could not the Minister have repeated, in relation to these levies, what he said last week about putting butter into ice-cream—that he would be ashamed to go back to Britain if ever anyone said that that must be part of the policy of the EEC? Does the hon. Lady not think that the right hon. Gentleman might have used the veto, having regard to the difficult circumstances that we are facing on the industrial front?

Mrs. Fenner: No, Sir. Of course, when they negotiated to join the EEC the Government did not know that there was going to be a fuel and energy crisis, partly outside our control and partly nationally inflicted. At the United Kingdom's request, the EEC has agreed to examine the CCT on foodstuffs for items where the tariffs might be cut or suspended in order to help counter-inflation.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will establish a separate food price index to cover the Christmas period.

Mrs. Fenner: No, Sir.

Mr. Mitchell: Why not?

Mrs. Fenner: Because the food index measured prices on 11th December and will do so again on 15th January, and this covers the whole of the Christmas period.

Mr. Golding: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what have been the increases in the prices of bacon and of eggs since June 1970 to the latest available date.

Mrs. Fenner: As the answer contains a number of figures I shall, with permission, circulate the information in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Golding: Is the Minister aware that when I was a child my Christmas treat consisted of oranges and nuts, but that this Christmas, due to the massive increase in prices, bacon and eggs will now become the standard Christmas treat for many children because their parents will not be able to afford to give bacon and eggs to them on any other morning in the year?

Mrs. Fenner: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, and sharing with him a fairly spartan childhood, I have to say that what he has said is absolute rubbish. Bacon has risen in price between 21p and 29p per pound, and eggs have risen in price by 22p to 24p per dozen. [Interruption.] As my right hon. Friend has pointed out, rises in both wages and pensions have exceeded the rise in the cost of living. So it is nonsense for the hon. Gentleman to suggest that the British meal of bacon and eggs is a luxury.

Mr. Jay: As the Minister persistently seeks to mislead the House by pretending that the Government are not responsible for a large part of the rise in food prices in recent months, will the hon. Lady say whether her right hon. Friend voted on Monday night in favour of the Government's order introducing a number of new food taxes?

Mrs. Fenner: Yes, Sir, on the Import Duties (General) (No. 8) Order.

Mr. Winterton: Is not it time that the Opposition showed some responsibility towards our farmers, who provide our food, and realised the increased costs with which farmers are faced? Is it not time that the British public realised the value that they are getting from the British farmer?

Mrs. Fenner: The throughput in egg packing stations throughout the United Kingdom is down by 13 per cent. on last year. That is because low egg prices in 1972 did not cover producers' costs, and caused a cut-back in production. Cutting back production is no way of ensuring good value for money.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: Will the hon. Lady tell the House, first, whether this constitutes a doubling of the price of eggs? Secondly, will she say why her right hon. Friend constantly quotes earnings and not wage rates, which are the


relevant rates in this respect? There is a distinction between earnings and wage rates. Thirdly, in the light of what she has just been saying, will she say whether she is giving any consideration to something for which the farmers of Britain constantly ask, namely, a pegging—indeed, a subsidisation—of the cost of foodstuffs to them?

Mrs. Fenner: On the first question, yes; it represents what the hon. Lady has said. Bearing in mind the explosion in the cost of animal foodstuffs, not even counting other costs, it is hardly to be wondered at. Earnings and wage rates are both relevant, but earnings are important, too, and I appreciate the hon. Lady's point on that matter.

Following is the information:

The following table shows the increases in average retail prices between 16th June 1970 and 13th November 1973, the latest date for which information is available.


Item
Change in Average Price (Money value)


Bacon (pence per lb.)


Collar
+ 21·3


Gammon
+ 28·2


Middle
+25·6


Back, smoked
+ 29·3


Back, unsmoked
+ 28·2


Streaky, smoked
+ 21·5


Eggs (pence per dozen)


Large
+ 22·4


Standard
+ 23·5


Medium
+ 24·3

Source: Department of Employment Index of Retail Prices.

Import Duties

Mr. Jay: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will remove all import duties or levies on food imported into the United Kingdom as long as retail food prices are above the levels of June 1970.

Mr. McBride: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will now discontinue all import levies or duties on food imported into the United Kingdom.

Mr. Godber: No, Sir.

Mr. Jay: As the removal of these taxes, which are the main cause of high food prices, would do a great deal to ease both the economic and the industrial situation in this country, may I

ask why the right hon. Gentleman will not remove them?

Mr. Godber: It is a pity that the right hon. Gentleman should persist in distorting the truth of the matter. He is wrong to try to mislead people in the way that he does. The total impact, with the increases on 1st January, amounts to less than 1 per cent. of consumers' expenditure on food. That is the true position.

Mr. Boscawen: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one reason for lower food production, particularly of dairy produce, is the disgraceful way that dairy farmers in my constituency were treated by the Labour Government? Will he bear this in mind in the review that he is undertaking at present?

Mr. Godber: I agree that the Labour Government treated all farmers disgracefully. I should not differentiate between dairy and other farmers. Since we came back into office we have been able to restore production, and the upward growth of production at home is materially assisting us at this time.

Mr. McBride: Is the Minister aware that the Tory Government have added to the staggeringly high price increases of food since 1970 by 50p in the pound by passing the Import Duties (General) (No. 8) Order? Is he aware that this will make the bacon-and-egg breakfast and midday meal for many of our people recede further and unhappily into the mists of memory? Is he also aware that his refusal to discontinue all import levies or duties on food means that the British housewife will not believe him when he talks about prices? Lastly, will he dredge up whatever vestiges of honesty remain in him and tell the British people the truth about prices and stop wriggling and twisting and showing his incompetence when Britain labours under a staggeringly high food price burden?

Mr. Godber: I have never wriggled or twisted, and I have always told the truth in this House. I have already given the figures for which we were asked regarding the actual increase in food prices. I shall now give the increase in earnings and pensions, which I think are strictly relevant. Against a food price increase of 46·2 per cent., there was an earnings increase of 48·7 per cent. and a pensions


increase of 55 per cent. The true comparison is between the earnings index of 48·7 per cent. and the real cost of living as a whole, which is in fact only 33·5 per cent. That is the true situation. If what the hon. Gentleman says about housewives having such a difficult time is true, I must point out that they were having a much more difficult time when the Labour Government were in office. These figures prove it.

Mr. Shore: We have had the first instalment this year of harmonisation towards the CAP, on 1st January we are to have the first taxes on a lot of Commonwealth imported food, and in April, if not earlier, we shall have the second instalment of our harmonisation towards the CAP. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether he sought to postpone the increases which are to come into effect on 1st January under the CET and whether he resisted any proposal to introduce the system of levies as well as taxes on imported lamb?

Mr. Godber: The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the degrees with which these measures have been introduced. Last month I put a proposal before the Council of Ministers suggesting that in the circumstances facing the whole Community it would be sensible to make some reduction in the Common External Tariff on food and on other items. This was not agreed, although there was agreement to consider whether something along those lines could be done.
I did not seek any change in the transitional arrangements because these were agreed, and I did not think it right for us to re-open an agreement that we had signed on accession. But I repeat that the effect of the January increase is about ¼ per cent.

Mr. Shore: What about the levies on lamb?

Mr. Godber: I have included those in my global reply. I did not ask for changes, because these represented one of the factors relating to the acclimatisation of our system with the Community which had been agreed. Therefore, I did not think it was right to ask for any changes. I think that it will have very little impact on the cost of food.

Mr. Handing: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will now remove all import duties or levies on butter and cheese imported into the United Kingdom from New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

Mr. Denzil Davies: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether, in pursuance of the counter-inflationary policy, he will now remove the import levies now charged on butter and cheese from outside the EEC.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Anthony Stodart): I would refer the hon. Members to the reply I gave on 22nd November to the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) and the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Russell Kerr).—[Vol. 864, Col. 464.]

Mr. Handing: Will the hon. Gentleman explain the contradiction between the claim of his right hon. Friend that all food price increases are due to increases in world prices and the fact that the Government are bent on imposing taxes on imported food from the Commonwealth which increase the price? Who is right—the Minister or his right hon Friend? Or are they both wrong?

Mr. Stodart: I would point out to the hon. Gentleman that despite the levy butter is 7p a pound cheaper than it was early in 1972, and the price of cheese has remained almost constant, again despite the levies.

Mr. Davies: Is the Minister aware that there are miners in my constituency who find it difficult to comprehend a situation where they are being denied a just wage on the ground that it would be inflationary, while the Government deliberately put up the price of food by imposing taxes? Will the Government now stop lecturing the miners and put their own house in order?

Mr. Stodart: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will explain to me how he can say that we have put up the price of food when, as I have said, butter has come down in price and cheese has remained level.

State Veterinary Service

Miss Fookes: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he


will make a statement on his examination of the State Veterinary Service.

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he is now able to make a statement on the action he is proposing to improve conditions of employment in the State Veterinary Service so as to encourage recruiting.

Mr. Godber: I am anxious to increase officers in my Department. Following a recent study by officials, various proposals are being considered in consultation with the staff association concerned and the Civil Service Department. These relate to the structure and management of the veterinary service, the nature of the duties undertaken by veterinary officers, and the opportunities for advancement in the service. I hope that as a result it will be possible to adopt measures that will make the veterinary service more attractive as a career.

Miss Fookes: May I impress upon my right hon. Friend the urgency of this matter, especially in view of the British Veterinary Association's assertion that if there were a serious outbreak of disease, such as foot-and-mouth, the service would break down?

Mr. Godber: I share my hon. Friend's concern about the position in the veterinary service. I want to see it resolved as soon as possible. I have had a number of discussions with those concerned. I hope that the joint working party that is considering the matter will come up with some helpful proposals. The veterinary service is part of the State Scientific Service and has to be considered in this wider context.

Mr. Mackie: The Minister did not give what I should regard as a very satisfactory reply to his hon. Friend. Is he relying entirely on the joint working party? Has he no ideas of his own on how to improve the service?

Mr. Godber: I tried to explain the position as it is. There is a problem here. Relativities within the Civil Service are important, as the hon. Gentleman knows. I want to find a system which will attract more people into the State Veterinary Service, to which I should like to pay tribute. Although the service is below strength, when we had the difficult outbreak of swine vesicular disease, those

concerned put in a great deal of overtime and did a lot to help to overcome the problem. I believe they would do so again should the need arise.

Mr. Morrison: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be aware of the concern felt by farmers about this matter. Will he take note that what is causing grave concern to farmers and vets is the relatively high age range of the existing members of the State Veterinary Service? Will he therefore give special consideration to the need to increase the responsibilities of junior members of the veterinary service as an incentive to encourage more young vets to come into it?

Mr. Godber: That is an extremely valid point, and I agree with my hon. Friend. We are looking into that matter.
Regarding the number of recruits coming into the veterinary service as a whole, both State and private, the Swann Report should be coming out about the middle of next year. I hope that that will help and guide us on recruitment into the service as a whole.

Dutch Elm Disease

Sir G. de Freitas: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, in view of the spread of Dutch elm disease, what steps he is now taking under the Plant Health Act 1967 to restrict the movement of diseased logs from the south of England to the north.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: My right hon. Friend is considering urgently whether powers should be sought under the Plant Health Act 1967 to control the movement of diseased logs from one area to another. I cannot at this stage add anything to the reply which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hands-worth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) on 22nd November.—[Vol. 864, c. 1536–7.]

Sir G. de Freitas: Is the Minister aware that that is why many of us are complaining about this matter? What has been done in the last month for the Minister to make up his mind? What hopes does he have of preventing the spread of this disease if this delay continues?

Mr. Stodart: We are trying to see whether a worthwhile scheme can be worked out whereby the spraying of logs


with insecticide before they are moved can be policed or monitored. It is not an easy thing to do.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: Is my hon. Friend aware that this disease has become so prevalent in the South-West that it is quite impossible to identify and to fell all the diseased trees? Will he consider further measures to try to bring this about?

Mr. Stodart: I do not think that I can go back on the statement that I made to the House. We must, sadly and regrettably, admit that we lost the battle on Dutch elm disease.

Tree Planting Year

Mr. Sydney Chapman: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the Forestry Commission's contribution to the "Plant a Tree in '73" campaign, with particular reference to supplies of trees the commission has made available to tree nurseries and the public.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: The Forestry Commission has undertaken a number of special amenity planting projects throughout the country, many of them in co-operation with local authorities. The commission has also donated substantial numbers of plants to schools, and wherever possible it has complied with requests to buy plants from its surplus stocks.

Mr. Chapman: I am grateful for that reply. As the "Plant a Tree in 1973" campaign has been a very great success, will my hon. Friend realise that it must now be a continuing process and that we must plant some more in '74? Will he give an assurance that the Forestry Commission will make even more supplies available for the public to plant?

Mr. Stodart: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the inspiration that he has given to the tree planting campaign. I can tell him that 90,000 trees have been donated to schools and about 70,000 trees for projects carried out in conjunction with local authorities. I shall certainly draw the attention of the Forestry Commission to what my hon. Friend has said, and I shall do anything I can to support his wishes.

Mr. Hamling: Is the Minister aware that the Department of the Environment sent to every hon. Member, in a large envelope, a circular about planting a tree, and that this constitutes a great waste of public money? The Minister ought to encourage his fellow Ministers to see that public money is saved as well as trees.

Mr. Stodart: Perhaps the fault lies in the fact that that material is a product of wood pulp.

Mr. Cormack: Would not the best contribution that my hon. Friend could make to the English countryside be to keep alive in '75 and beyond our English elm trees? Will he think again about the capitulation which he has recently announced?

Mr. Stodart: It was not a recent announcement; it was something which had to be faced, because there is no known treatment for Dutch elm disease other than the individual injection of trees, and even that is by no means really established as a cure. It is not a method which is practicable for all the trees in the country.

Wines

Mr. Cronin: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will seek powers to control the quality of the lower-priced wines sold in Great Britain.

Mrs. Fenner: No. Existing and projected legislation at national and Community level should provide the consumer with adequate safeguards on the composition and labelling of wine. It is not my function to intervene further by limiting the range of qualities available to consumers.

Mr. Cronin: Has the hon. Lady's attention been drawn to a report of a comprehensive nature recently published in the Sunday Times, which indicated that a substantial proportion of wines sold to the British public are of unduly poor quality, undrinkable, or fraudulently labelled? Will the hon. Lady use her influence on the wine trade to persuade it to put its affairs in better order?

Mrs. Fenner: Like the hon. Gentleman, I read that criticism in the Sunday Times colour supplement with great interest. But that criticism no doubt reflects to some degree the preferences of


the individuals who wrote the article. Provided that certain minimum compositional and hygiene requirements are met, and provided that wine is correctly labelled—

Mr. Carter: It is not correctly labelled. Get it right.

Mrs. Fenner: Under the Food and Drugs Act wine has to be correctly labelled. The draft Community regulation on the description and presentation of wine is likely to be finalised in the fairly near future, and the proposal in that regulation, which spells out fairly stringent labelling requirements for wine, has been generally welcomed by consumer organisations in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Marten: When shall we be debating that draft regulation?

Mrs. Fenner: The draft regulation is not yet ready.

Common Agricultural Policy

Mr. Deakins: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on discussions in the EEC Council about reform of the CAP.

Mr. Marten: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on progress towards reforming the common agricultural policy.

Mr. Godber: We had a general preliminary discussion of the Commission's report in the Council of Ministers on 19th and 20th November. This was followed by a fuller exchange of views about the Commission's proposals for individual commodities in the meeting on 10th and 11th December.

Mr. Deakins: Will the reform proposals make any difference to the present high level of food prices in this country and to the food taxes which are now imposed on food imports?

Mr. Godber: It is too early to say what will eventuate from these discussions, which will be long and detailed and will be involved also with discussions about prices within the Community for the forthcoming 12 months. These are the matters which we shall be discussing in the next two or three months.

I could not speculate on the outcome, but in my interventions on these two occasions I have made clear the United Kingdom's opposition to one or two factors which we think are wrong in the Commission's proposals.

Mr. Marten: Will my right hon. Friend say what is the definitive date by which we have to reach a decision on the question of sugar? Also, may I say that when he gets down to discussing the question of sugar I hope he will bear in mind that, although the undertaking is to import 1·4 million tons from the Commonwealth sugar-producing countries, that will not be regarded as satisfactory on the Government side of the House unless exports from the Common Market are restricted in the light of world conditions?

Mr. Godber: The definitive date when decisions on sugar will have to be taken is February 1975, not February 1974, and I do not expect that we shall get down to serious discussion of the major issues on sugar for some months yet. There will be consideration of the 1974 Community price level of sugar, and that will have to be dealt with in the general price consideration for 1974. But the matters to which my hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention are the ones which will be decided before February 1975, and in relation to those I made the Government's position quite clear in the detailed debate on this subject a short time ago. I do not think that I can usefully add to what I said then.

Mr. Shore: Are we to understand from what the Minister has said that not only in these preliminary exchanges have the Government not put forward proposals for removing the CAP from a number of commodities, like sugar and rice, which it at present covers, but, worse still, that it is now actually being proposed that the CAP should be extended to mutton and lamb, so that they would be subject not merely to the food taxes of 1st January, which are duties and tariffs, but to the levies of the CAP?

Mr. Godber: It is perfectly true that I did not oppose the existing Community régime. As regards sheepmeat, I have said that the United Kingdom would be prepared to consider a sheepmeat regulation if it were prepared in a form which would meet the requirements of the


United Kingdom, both as a major producer, being the largest producer of sheepmeat in the Community, and also as a major importer, being also the largest importer of sheepmeat in the Community. If we are to have a sheepmeat regulation, I attach great importance to having one which suits our requirements. I said that I would not be prepared to agree to one unless and until it did that. But if we get one which suits our requirements, I see no reason to resist.

Farm Subsidies

Sir Robin Turton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the future of the hill cow, hill sheep, and winter keep subsidy schemes.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: As my right hon. Friend said in his statement to the House on 22nd November, the general effect of the decisions recently reached in Brussels is to confirm our ability to continue paying these subsidies on broadly the same lines as at present.

Sir Robin Turton: I am sure the whole farming industry will be very glad to hear that announcement, but is my hon. Friend aware that there is uncertainty about the winter keep scheme, and that in view of the escalation of feeding stuff costs it is very important for farmers in hill and marginal lands to have long-term assurances on this subject?

Mr. Stodart: I can only repeat that we have reached a position where we feel able to continue paying the subsidies broadly as they are at the moment. Although the winter keep scheme in England differs from that which operates in Scotland, as my right hon. Friend will know, I have no reason to suppose that either scheme will run into difficulties.

Mr. Mackie: Will there be any gap between the two schemes, as there was between the two horticultural schemes?

Mr. Stodart: I can give the hon. Gentleman an assurance that existing support will continue until the new directive comes into force.

Mr. Fortescue: Does my hon. Friend agree that decisions of this kind are made in Brussels by a Council of Ministers consisting of eight Ministers of Agriculture and my right hon. Friend,

who is the only one who is also a Minister of Food? Will he therefore accept that a very heavy responsibility falls on my right hon. Friend in protecting the interests of the consumer in these matters?

Mr. Stodart: I think that my right hon. Friend has discharged those responsibilities admirably.

PATRIOTISM

Mr. Wyn Roberts: Q1. Mr. Wyn Roberts asked the Prime Minister if he will make the encouragement of patriotism a concern of his administration.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): Yes, Sir.

Mr. Roberts: Is my right hon. Friend being kept fully aware of the disruptive activities of the followers of another kind of "ism" who are intolerant of patriotism, especially in the trade unions? Also, is he being kept fully aware of the Communist contribution to the present confrontation between the Government and the trade unions, and of the Communist plan announced as early as last autumn to have as many as 5 million workers involved in industrial action as a New Year's greeting to the Government and the country?

The Prime Minister: The media have given publicity to the statements to which my hon. Friend has referred, and to that extent I have full information about them.

Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister try to direct his back benchers to stop seeing "reds under the Ted" in the present crisis? Does he agree that, unlike the Tory Government of a previous generation, patriotism has become the first refuge of a scoundrel, and will he stop perverting love of country for his own peculiar short-term aims by trying to bring public criticism down upon the heads of miners and other industrial workers in strife, who are good servants of this country?

The Prime Minister: The view expressed by the hon. Gentleman is not that held by many trade union leaders who come to see me and discuss these matters.

Sir Gilbert Longden: Is the hon. Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock) aware that it is not only those on this side who see reds under the bed? Has his attention been drawn to Mr. Frank Chapple's remarks, in his union journal "Contact", that the moderates of the unions have allowed the Left to make the running for far too long?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I have read what Mr. Frank Chapple had to say, and of course he made the point very clearly. But he is not the only trade union leader who has done that. Tom Jackson has done it, and so have many others.

Mr. C. Pannell: Will the Prime Minister, particularly at this time of the year, refrain from lending any cover from his own great office to the idea that the line of patriotism is drawn straight down this Chamber? Will he allow that half of the nation which largely supports the Labour Party is just as likely to stand for this country in peace or war as any of those yappers from the back benches opposite?

The Prime Minister: That is not a line which I should ever have dreamed for a moment of drawing, as I think the right hon. Gentleman, who knows me very well, will agree. Of course, a line like that cannot be drawn. The great majority of people in all parties in this country are, in my view, patriots.

MIDDLE EAST OIL

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Q2. Sir J. Langford-Holt asked the Prime Minister what are the duties of his special adviser on the transport of Middle East oil.

The Prime Minister: I have made no such appointment, Sir.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that such an appointment was made about 15 years ago by Mr. Harold Macmillan, when we were in a similar position with regard to oil, and that we have since also had bodies such as emergency committees? Today, we find ourselves in a very similar position. Will my right hon. Friend indicate how we can make sure, within the shortest possible time, that we shall never again find ourselves in this position?

The Prime Minister: I recollect, like my hon. Friend, that Mr. Macmillan appointed an adviser on the transport of Middle East oil, and that, if I recollect correctly, was after the Suez Canal had been closed. The problem which we are facing today is of a different nature. The problem today is not the transport of oil; it is the limitation in the quantity of oil by certain Arab countries.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Will the Prime Minister now answer the question I put in the debate earlier this week, which his right hon. Friend did not answer. Does the Prime Minister regard the
firm assurances from important oil-producing countries".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th October 1973; Vol. 863, c. 38.]
which he reported to the House as still valid and binding?

The Prime Minister: Certain Arab countries gave us those assurances, as I told the House. They are endeavouring to carry them out. As for quantities, as I have already told the House, we were working on the basis of the economy expanding at a 3½ per cent. rate of growth in 1974. The figures used by the Arab Governments are those of the current year and to that extent, therefore, it produces a problem. The countries to which I referred are trying to deal with the problem because by various means we have drawn it to their attention, but they obviously prefer the details not to be discussed in public.

Mr. Wilson: I do not want to press the right hon. Gentleman to say more on this than he wishes, hut he must be getting daily figures of loading from the Gulf. Will he say whether those daily figures bear out 100 per cent. the assurances he reported to the House on 30th October.

The Prime Minister: From the particular countries which gave us those assurances, that would be the case.

USSR (OFFICIAL VISIT)

Mr. Adley: Q3. Mr. Adley asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his forthcoming visit to the USSR.

The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend will have seen from the communiqué published after the visit to the Soviet


Union by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, I hope to take up the Soviet Government's invitation in the coming year.

Mr. Adley: I realise why my right hon. Friend has had to postpone his visit to China, but will he ensure that before he goes to Russia he rearranges the date of his visit to China, because I suspect that the Chinese Government are putting more store on his visit to China than the Russian Government are on his visit to Russia?

The Prime Minister: No date has yet been considered with the Soviet Government, but I welcome the improvement in relations which has taken place between the two countries. Mr. Gromyko has accepted an invitation to come here in 1974, and I look forward to going to the Soviet Union in the course of the year. As for China, I have been in communication with Mr. Chou En-lai about the possibility of a future date.

Mr. John Mendelson: Will the Prime Minister represent to the leaders of the Soviet Government the fact that there is widespread support in the House and outside for the security conference in Geneva, in the hope that it will lead to firm proposals linked to the Vienna Conference on reductions in the numbers of troops? Will he make clear that the people who have worked for years for this security conference would be gravely disappointed if there were not also success in the Third Commission, which deals with human freedom and the increase in free communications between people in East and West?

The Prime Minister: These were the precise matters considered by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary with Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Podgorny during my right hon. Friend's visit to Moscow. In particular, he emphasised the last point of the hon. Member's question, with which we in the Government are in complete agreement.

Miss Joan Hall: Further to the question asked by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) about human freedom, will my right hon. Friend, when he next meets the leaders of the USSR, raise with them the rights of minority religions in Russia to prac-

tise their faiths, because, although the Jews have hit the headlines, there is another cruelly harassed minority, namely, the Baptists?

The Prime Minister: We are able to discuss these matters, as I have just mentioned, in the context of the security conference and the Third Commission because our two countries are taking part. It is not possible for us to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union, but at the same time my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary thought it right to point out to Mr. Gromyko that the policy pursued in this respect, although entirely a matter for the Soviet Union, has an impact outside Russia, and particularly on public opinion here.

Mr. Lipton: The Prime Minister keeps talking about what he is going to do in the coming year. Will he have time to visit both China and Russia before the next General Election?

The Prime Minister: I hope to have time to visit both China and Russia in 1974.

NATIONAL EXHIBITION CENTRE

Mr. Sydney Chapman: Q4. Mr. Sydney Chapman asked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the co-ordination between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment with regard to work on the National Exhibition Centre.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Chapman: As good public transport communications and ancillary services are crucial to the success of the National Exhibition Centre, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the new British Rail station at Bickenhill and the new air freight terminal at Birmingham Airport will go ahead as planned and will not in any way be held back by the recent announcement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the cut-back in public expenditure?

The Prime Minister: I realise the importance of the two matters mentioned by my hon. Friend. Representatives of the Department of the Environment and the Department of Trade and Industry will be meeting the representatives of


the National Exhibition Centre very shortly to discuss the timetable in the light of the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

NATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Mr. Carter: Q5. Mr. Carter asked the Prime Minister if he will seek to address the next meeting of the NEDC.

Mr. Norman Lamont: Q8. Mr. Norman Lamont asked the Prime Minister when he next plans to attend a meeting of the National Economic Development Council.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I shall be taking the chair at the meeting of the National Economic Development Council tomorrow.

Mr. Carter: Before that meeting takes place, will the Prime Minister tell the House with what moral authority he can ask the TUC and the unions to abide by the provisions of stage 3 when on 5th September 1966 he publicly and openly urged the TUC and the trade unions to undermine the then Government's prices and incomes policy?

The Prime Minister: What I urged at that time was that this was a matter which should be discussed at the conference. I have never in any way denied the right of the TUC or the CBI to argue with me or any other member of the Government about these policies. As I have constantly told the House, there have been 18 months of discussion about this. I had further discussion yesterday evening with the six TUC representatives of "Neddy" about these policies, and, of course, I am ready at any time to argue these matters. I am sure that I shall be able to continue the discussion tomorrow at the "Neddy" meeting.

Mr. Tom King: At that meeting will my right hon. Friend be saying how many workers have now accepted agreements under phase 3? Can he give the latest figures to the House today?

The Prime Minister: Just on 3 million have so far settled under phase 3 and have informed the Pay Board.

Mr. Harold Wilson: I am sure that the Prime Minister would be the last person to wish to mislead the House

over the answer he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) concerning his message to the TUC in 1966. Will he take a little time over Christmas to look up the precise text of what he said to the TUC and publicly—and perhaps on a future occasion in the House—correct the misleading impression which he just gave, I am sure inadvertently?

The Prime Minister: I do not believe that it was a misleading impression, but I am prepared to look up the text of the statement I made at the time. It was a party conference which the then Prime Minister was attending and it was obviously a matter on which it could pass resolutions and urge these upon the Government.

Mr. Wilson: The Prime Minister has got even that wrong. It was not a party conference, and I was not due to attend it. It was a TUC congress, and if he will look up the actual text he will see precisely what he said. For purposes of greater accuracy I shall gladly supply him with a copy if he wishes. It is not what he said to the House this afternoon.

CBI AND TUC (MEETINGS)

Mr. Atkinson: Q6. Mr. Atkinson asked the Prime Minister what further meetings he has planned with the TUC and CBI.

The Prime Minister: I saw representatives of the TUC yesterday and I hope to meet the CBI again soon.

Mr. Atkinson: When the Prime Minister met the TUC leaders last night did he discuss with them, or does he intend to discuss with them in the future, the possibility that if the constituent parts of the TUC gave an undertaking that they would not seek wage increases over and above phase 3 he would try to bring to a conclusion the dispute the Government now have with the mineworkers? Is that the situation for the Government?

The Prime Minister: The discussion last night centred almost entirely on the question of the three-day week, how it would be organised, the consequences for industry, and so on, before the "Neddy" meeting tomorrow. The point raised by the hon. Member was not specifically put to the TUC representatives, but they made


it plain that they were in no position to give any such undertaking, and in fairness to them this has always been their approach throughout the discussions we have had. They have always said that they are not in a position to give an assurance of that kind.

Mr. Redmond: Has my right hon. Friend ever discussed with the TUC and the CBI the question of recruitment to the mining industry? How many new recruits have come into the industry so far this year? Is it right to say that over 50 per cent. of them are miners coming back to the industry?

The Prime Minister: I cannot give my hon. Friend the total recruitment figure, but 85 per cent. of recruits to the mines were adults. That is 35 per cent. higher than the figure for the last six months of the previous year. One of the difficulties about recruiting younger people is the increase in the school leaving age. We have seen a considerable increase in the proportion of adults returning to the mines. About 70 per cent. of total recruitment is of people who were previously miners.

Mr. Michael Foot: The right hon. Gentleman has given the House the impression, by previous answers—and perhaps the House has been given the same impression today—that the decline in the number of people in the pits is due principally to the overtime ban. Does the right hon. Gentleman take into account the fact that there is hardly a pit in the country which has not been short of miners, not for weeks but for months, and even years? What does he think will be the effect on the mining communities—the only places from which the country will get new miners—if he carries through confrontation to the point which he has seemed to indicate in all his previous replies?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman must be exaggerating. Why is it that the number fell by 185,000 during the administration of the last Labour Government? Why were many men made redundant? Special arrangements were made for redundancies, and this Government continued with those arrangements. In fact we improved the arrangements.
When the Government are carrying through a policy which has been approved by Parliament and enacted—the code has been approved by Parliament and nearly 3 million workers have registered under that policy and accepted it—why, because one group of workers opposes it, are the Government causing confrontation? Nothing can be further from the truth.

Mr. Woodhouse: When the Prime Minister next meets the President of the CBI, will he ask him whether the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer was right in representing him as having advocated a policy of price control without wage control?

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend for drawing the attention of the House to this matter. The President of the CBI has drawn attention to the fact that he made no such statement. It was twice suggested that he made such a statement by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). The President of the CBI says that he made no such statement. In fact, he set out all the possible options which the CBI, the TUC and the Government could consider. One of those options was the one put forward by the TUC, namely, that there should be price control and no incomes policy. The President of the CBI has always rejected that option in all the talks which have been held.

Mr. Harold Wilson: The reply which the right hon. Gentleman gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) did not sound convincing to me. At a Conservative gathering the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House said that the Government were engaged in a struggle with the coal miners and the train drivers. Does that represent the policy of Her Majesty's Government?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman knows the position perfectly well. The Government are standing firm by stage 3. If there is a group in the community which opposes the Government's policy, any confrontation which may result is not the responsibility of the Government. I have constantly made it plain that the Government do not want confrontation. The railwaymen's dispute has nothing to do with stage 3. ASLEF


is in conflict with two other unions as well as the management.

Mr. Wilson: Does the Lord President's statement represent the policy of Her Majesty's Government—yes or no?

The Prime Minister: If the railwaymen and miners insist on carrying through their policies, that must mean a struggle not with the Government but with the whole country. That is the position.

RAILWAY ACCIDENT, EALING

Mr. Batsford: Mr. Batsford (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the fatal rail accident between Ealing Broadway station and West Ealing station on Wednesday evening, 19th December?

The Minister for Transport Industries (Mr. John Peyton): I very much regret to inform the House that at 5.37 p.m. last night an 11-coach passenger train from Paddington to Oxford was derailed when travelling at speed between Ealing Broadway and West Ealing stations. Ten passengers were killed and 53 injured, eight of them seriously enough to be still detained in hospital.
The House will wish to know that I have received a message of sympathy from the Queen and Prince Philip which, at Her Majesty's request, I have passed on to the Chairman of the British Railways Board. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has also sent a message to the Chairman. I know that the House will join with me in expressing most deep sympathy with the relatives of those who were killed and with the injured.
The police, fire and ambulance services were on the scene within five minutes of the derailment. I should like to acknowledge the magnificent way in which they and the voluntary services carried out the work of rescue. It is also right to mention with gratitude the immediate help given by drivers from local depots; they have called off their non-co-operation for the time being in order to get things straight as soon as possible.
I am not able at this stage to inform the House of the cause of this tragic

accident, but I understand that neither vandalism nor the recent repairs to the track at this point were any part of the cause. One of my inspecting officers went to the scene last night; the Chief Inspecting Officer will be holding a public inquiry as soon as possible.

Mr. Batsford: I should like to be associated with my right hon. Friend's expression of sympathy with the relatives of those killed or injured. I join with him in paying tribute to the wonderful work of the police under the direction of Commander Payne, and the other rescue services which acted so promptly. I pay tribute to the residents of Craven Avenue and neighbouring roads in my constituency who did such a wonderful job and gave such great assistance in the rescue.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the steel construction of the coaches and the buck-eye couplings prevented what might have been a greater loss of life? Will he give an assurance that those whose houses and gardens have been damaged as a result of the accident will receive some form of compensation?

Mr. Peyton: I should be grateful if my hon. my hon. Friend would give me some particulars regarding his last point. I am sure that the House will note what he has said with warm agreement and approval. It is hard to exaggerate the prompt way in which the voluntary services, the police and railwaymen of all grades took action to relieve suffering as soon as possible.

Mr. Mulley: I associate my right hon. and hon. Friends with the right hon. Gentleman's expression of deep sympathy with the relatives of those who were killed or injured. I place on record the Opposition's acknowledgment of the work of the public services and the volunteers who turned up promptly and efficiently. We acknowledge the action of the many railwaymen concerned. Will the right hon. Gentleman indicate what process of inquiry will follow? Will there be a public inquiry? Will the report be published? Can the right hon. Gentleman give us an indication of the approximate timetable of those events? Further, will he confirm that there is no connection between the accident and the railway-men's industrial dispute?

Mr. Peyton: I gladly give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance which he seeks. There is no connection between the present non co-operation on the part of ASLEF and the accident. The inquiry will be held in public as soon as possible. A report will be published.

Mr. Woodhouse: On behalf of a number of my constituents who were on the fatal train, may I thank my right hon. Friend for his expression of sympathy and join him in thanking the rescue services, which played such a magnificent part last night? May I also thank my right hon. Friend for the assurance that he has just given to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley), which otherwise I would have asked him to give, that there can be no possible ground for associating last night's catastrophe in any way, directly or indirectly, with the consequences of the current industrial action?

Mr. Peyton: I am sure that all those concerned will note with appreciation what my hon. Friend said.

Mr. Molloy: May I associate myself with the remarks of the Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Bats-ford) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) on the way in which the police and the ambulance service responded so superbly to this terrible accident?
May I inform the House that very late last night and in the early hours of this morning ordinary people came to the scene in an orderly manner, offering assistance and even offering to take victims of the accident to their homes in Reading? Councillors and aldermen meeting in the Ealing Town Hall abandoned the meeting and, with the deputy town clerk, charwomen and porters from the town hall knuckled to and made a remarkable contribution. It is just that sort of action that has made this country great.
When the inquiry is under way, will the right hon. Gentlemen ensure that there is full discussion? A grievous situation like this seems to bring out the best in the British people. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we need to find other means than disasters to bring out this superb expression of humanity towards each other?

Mr. Peyton: I agree wholeheartedly with the last part of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. On this occasion there has been a wonderful display of kindness and compassion by everyone concerned. I also share his reflection that it takes an agonising disaster like this to make people behave towards each other with humanity.

Dr. Vaughan: I, too, should like to be associated with the sympathies that the House sends to the relatives and to the people who have been injured I thank the Minister for his statement. I understand that the 10 people who were killed and the majority of those who were injured come from my constituency or the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Astor). I hope that the Minister will be able to come back to the House with information about the inquiry as soon as possible after Christmas when the House resumes. Lastly, may I add my tribute to the way in which the accident services functioned? The speed with which they coped with the situation was magnificent.

Mr. Peyton: I appreciate what my hon. Friend said and assure him and the House that there will be no unnecessary or avoidable delay in bringing the inquiry to a conclusion.

Mr. Bidwell: May I join the Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Batsford) and my right hon. and hon. Friends in praising the maginficent public response of all those who were concerned in coping with the accident—the railway workers, the public services and the people who ran out from their houses to do what they could?
It is the rarity of railway accidents that causes so much attention to be given by the House to one that occurs, and makes headline news. As the inquiry will be the usual and traditionally exhaustive one, will the right hon. Gentleman expedite it as much as possible, because there has been a local history of vandalism on this part of the line, as a result of which there is apprehension and rumour?
Will the right hon. Gentleman's Department pay attention to the aspect that theories are proffered by the Press on


the cause of the accident? Although we in the House are restrained from making deductions about the cause of the accident until we have evaluated the facts, the Press are free to make deductions.

Mr. Peyton: As I said in my original Answer, there is absolutely no reason to attribute this accident to vandalism, and I am happy to repeat that assurance. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman said that this accident attracts great attention because of its rarity. One would wish on such an occasion to have in mind, as the hon. Gentleman obviously has, the extraordinarily good safety record of British Railways.

CHILEAN REFUGEES

Mrs. Hart: Mrs. Hart (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will delay the threatened immediate deportation of seven Chilean refugees until firm offers of university places can be made to them.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. Carr): These seven people did not present themselves as refugees or students but as visitors arriving from France. They expressed a wish to stay here for a month or two. In subsequent examination by the immigration officers they were specifically asked whether they sought asylum and they said that they did not.
They were, therefore, properly considered under the Immigration Rules relating to visitors and under these rules were in my view properly refused permission to enter.
Under our Immigration Rules visitors who present themselves at our ports without any entry clearance and are refused entry have no right to remain in this country in order to appeal but do have a right of appeal exercisable from abroad after their departure.
In accordance with usual practice, I shall not enforce their departure until I have carefully considered the representations which I have received from the right hon. Lady and other hon. Members; but I think I should tell the House that in my view the normal Immigration Rules must prevail with these seven people as with everyone else.

Mrs. Hart: I am grateful for the Home Secretary's assurance that he will give further time to consider this matter. I appreciate that these people arriving from Chile present difficulties in terms of our normal Immigration Rules. Does the right hon. Gentleman fully appreciate that people arriving from Chile present themselves on our shores in effect as refugees?
The seven who came were all academics, graduates who had been working as civil servants in ministries under the Allende Government. When they arrived they had no contacts and the question of transferring them from visitor status to the status of people with places in universities—[Interruption.] If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Government benches do not care about the fate of people who are being persecuted in Chile, the least they can do is to keep quiet.
I appreciate the problem of the Immigration Rules in this case, but I ask the Home Secretary whether, in terms of the assurance that was given to some of us by the Foreign Secretary and by himself a little later, special consideration may be given to people arriving from Chile? Could it be made normal practice, when people arrive from Chile seeking visitors' visas, for a little more time to be given and for consultation to be undertaken directly with those who know the immediate details about them before a final decision is made? That would be of great assistance.

Mr. Carr: First, two weeks of very careful consideration at ministerial level were given to this case. Secondly, these people arrived not from Chile but from France. They did not arrive from Chile where they were being persecuted. They had got away from where they were possibly being persecuted, they had got to France, and they arrived here from France. We specifically took the trouble to ask them—not in a moment of hurry or turmoil—whether they wished to be considered as refugees. They specifically said that they did not.

Mr. Wilkinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that many genuine applicants for entry into the United Kingdom who have a right to come to the United Kingdom are delayed in coming to this country because of bogus applications?


My right hon. Friend and other hon. Members in the House who have experience of immigration matters will be aware of this fact. Therefore, does the Home Secretary agree that the House and the country will take note of the fact that the right hon. Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) and her colleagues are prepared to advocate the bending of the rules in cases which suit their own particular interests?

Mr. Carr: My concern is to apply the rules in a fair, firm, but compassionate manner to all people, from wherever they come. In one or two cases I have already taken account of compassionate circumstances. Before ministerial decision was made in this case—and I emphasise that the final decision was taken at ministerial level—particular inquiries were made to see whether there were any special compassionate circumstances. Only the previous day I had found a case from one part of Chile where there were special compassionate circumstances, and I took a different decision. But the seven people to whom the right hon. Lady referred did not come from Chile; they did not claim to be refugees; and there were no compassionate circumstances.

Mr. Clinton Davis: Will the Home Secretary repudiate those of his Conservative colleagues who urge that no civilised treatment should be afforded to those who come from Chile because they happen to have been associated with the Allende régime? Secondly, will he give the House an assurance that no representations were made to his Department by the Chilean Ambassador urging the Government not to allow these people into the country? Finally, can he say to which country these people will be returned, if he decides to take such a course?

Mr. Carr: If I may take the last point first, I must tell the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis) that no representations were received by the present Chilean Ambassador on the lines the hon. Gentleman suggests. These people presumably will go back to France, from where they came. As for the hon. Gentleman's first point, if and when I hear such suggestions from any quarter of the House I shall deny them. I have not yet heard such suggestions.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Harold Wilson: Will the Leader of the House kindly indicate his present thinking on the issues that the House may be debating in the first week after the recess?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): May I give the House the business which may take place when we return:

TUESDAY 15TH JANUARY—Supply (8th allotted day).

The Question will be put on all outstanding Supplementary Estimates and on the Civil Vote on Account.

Debate on a motion to take note of reports from the Expenditure Committee.

WEDNESDAY 16TH JANUARY—Progress on the remaining stages of the Local Government Bill.

THURSDAY 17TH JANUARY—Second Reading of the Companies Bill.

FRIDAY 18TH JANUARY—Second Reading of the Solicitors (Amendment) Bill.

Mr. Wilson: This business statement, unusually, is not to be taken seriously. It represents no more than the doodlings of the Leader of the House about what we may be debating, and events may mean that the priority of debates will be entirely different. My only question, which I hope he will take seriously—he is, after all, Leader of the House—is this: is he aware that the House as a whole hopes that he will have a very happy Christmas?

Mr. Prior: That is certainly the most pleasant question I have ever been asked during business questions. I should like to respond and to wish the whole House and you, Mr. Speaker, a happy Christmas.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: My right hon. Friend has indicated the date of the Second Reading of the Companies Bill. What is now the position about the Green Paper on worker participation and the projected debate thereon?

Mr. Prior: I hope that the Green Paper will be available fairly early in the new year, after which the House will wish to have time to debate it.

Mr. Swain: Will the right hon. Gentleman find time to debate in the not-too-distant future Early Day Motion No. 116.

[That this House believes that the Secretary of State for the Environment has been grossly negligent in the way he has handled the refusal of Clay Cross UDC to implement the Housing Finance Act of 1972; suggests that the Minister should have sent in the Housing Commission in July 1972 as requested by the Council at Clay Cross; considers that as a consequence of his refusal to act he has penalised the 11 members of Clay Cross Council for something that the Secretary of State should have done in the first place; and believes that the Minister should be compelled to make a statement in the House and apologise to the 11 members for his neglect.]

That is a serious motion because its effect is that the responsible Secretary of State has been criminally negligent in not sending in the Housing Commission for a period of 14 months. Therefore, he has neglected everybody in Clay Cross and, above all, encouraged the very people whom that mob on the Conservative benches have been condemning. Will he find time to discuss this urgent motion? No doubt Conservative Members could be in the Smoking Room during the period of the debate.

Mr. Prior: No, Sir. In a less fraternal mood than that in which I replied to the point put to me by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, I must totally reject the terms of Motion No. 116. I do not consider it right to debate these matters while the issues involved are before the courts.

Mr. Swain: They are not before the court. They are finished.

Mr. Biffen: Is my right hon. Friend aware that before any ministerial decision is reached about the massive nuclear programme to be undertaken by the CEGB, he must take account of the fact that there is widespread anxiety that any decision must be preceded by the publication of a Green Paper and a debate in this House? May we assume from the fact that this matter does not feature in the first week's business after the Recess that no decision will have been taken by that time?

Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry dealt with this point in his speech on Tuesday evening, and I have nothing to add. I shall see that the additional points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) are brought to the Secretary of State's attention, but I have no knowledge that an announcement will be made as soon as we return after the recess.

Mr. Sheldon: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether, when we return, the debate on public expenditure will relate to the White Paper on public expenditure? Will he further comment on the undertaking that in normal circumstances there would be a debate following the publication of the White Paper, with a further debate in the Budget proceedings? This matter is particularly important because the Government are resting largely on public expenditure cuts as the main instrument of their economic planning. As a result it will be more necessary than normal to examine the implications in a public expenditure debate.

Mr. Prior: The debate to be held when the House resumes is not a debate on the White Paper on public expenditure. I hope to arrange that debate shortly afterwards. It will be before the Budget, and I hope that it will be shortly after the first week the House resumes.

Mr. Idris Owen: Will my right hon. Friend accept the statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) and recognise that there is grave perturbation on the serious question of nuclear power? Will he assure the House that there is no evidence to suggest that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will come to the House only when the decision is made? Will he accept that grave problems are involved and that the nation desires a full debate before any decision is made about the purchase of light water reactors from the United States?

Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is well aware of the anxiety on this matter in the House and indeed the interest that is taken in this subject, and he has on several occasions dealt with it. I repeat what my right hon. Friend said—


namely that no decision has been reached. I shall convey to my right hon. Friend the strong views of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Idris Owen).

Mr. Charles R. Morris: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, despite anxieties expressed in business questions last week on the prospective decision of the Minister of Transport Industries in respect of the SELNEC PTA Piccadilly-Victoria rapid transit scheme in the greater Manchester area, the Minister this evening will indicate, in reply to a Written Question, that he is giving what has been interpreted as a qualified go-ahead to this scheme? Will he confirm that the Minister's decision means a go-ahead to the scheme, and will he explain that this is a crucial decision which has not been announced to the House?

Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend is answering two Questions today, one from the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) and the other from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. Fidler), and I think that it would be wrong for me to go further than to say that the hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. Charles R. Morris) will have to await the answers to those Questions.

Mr. Fowler: Can my right hon. Friend give a firm assurance that there will be an opportunity in the new year to debate the Government's policy on crime? May I remind him that it is now more than 18 months since the Criminal Law Revision Committee reported and that that very important report has been debated virtually everywhere, apart from in this Chamber?

Mr. Prior: Yes, Sir. I am aware of my hon. Friend's anxiety and of the number of times that he has raised the matter of the report. I hope that we shall be able to find time for a debate. My hon. Friend asked for a debate in the new year. I hope that it will be possible fairly early in the new year.

Mr. George Cunningham: Is the Leader of the House aware of the large number of recommendations of the Procedure Committee outstanding which have not yet been considered by the House? May we have some indication about when the

right hon. Gentleman will be able to squeeze in those recommendations?

Mr. Prior: I should like to look into that, but I cannot see an early opportunity for a debate on these matters.

Dame Irene Ward: In view of the fact that there are certain rumours that the order is about to be laid concerning the Kielder Dam, may I ask my right hon. Friend once again whether it will be before or after Christmas? He will be aware that I am very grateful to him. However, I should like a Christmas present.

Mr. Prior: Nothing would suit me better than to be able to give my hon. Friend a Christmas present. However, I have no further news beyond that which I gave her last week. I have done my best, and so has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to see that the order should go through as quickly as possible, and I shall remind my right hon. Friend of his undertaking to my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward).

Mr. Elystan Morgan: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to use all his powers of persuasion with his right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to try to get the Agricultural Price Review statement made as early as possible in the New Year and, if possible, in the very first week of our return? Is he aware that there are grave apprehensions in the agriculture industry about the £500 million-plus increase in production costs suffered this year and that this is the most astronomic increase in the history of British agriculture?

Mr. Prior: Yes, Sir. My right hon. Friend is well aware of the problems of the agriculture industry, as I am. The £500 million increase in costs is an indication of the cost of world supplies this year. However, I do not think that my right hon. Friend will be able to make a statement as early as our first week back. I know that he is keen to bring the Price Review to a satisfactory conclusion as early as possible, and I will convey the hon. Gentleman's remarks to him.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Has my right hon. Friend had a chance to look again at Early Day Motion No. 24, and will he bear in mind that by the time that the


House comes back after the recess, if we are to have a chance to debate the withdrawal of check-in facilities at West London Air Terminal, these will have been withdrawn already for some 11 days? Will my right hon. Friend try to do something to assist the travelling public?

[That this House calls upon the British Airports Authority and British Airways to retain the check-in system at the Cromwell Road Terminal at least until the rail link to Heathrow is open for passenger use.]

Mr. Prior: I believe that certain statements are likely to be made in another place, but I should like to check again on the views expressed by my hon. Friend and, if necessary, to write to him about them.

Dr. Marshall: Will the right hon. Gentleman find time soon after the recess for a debate on the Report of the Departmental Working Party on School Transport?

Mr. Prior: That report has only just been published, and it is too early yet to think about a debate. In any event, I should not be able to find time in the immediate future.

Several hon. Members: Several hon. Membersrose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must move on. Mr. Davies. Statement.

Mr. Russell Kerr: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not aware that we have an excessively crowded programme this afternoon, and I wish to refer the Leader of the House to a matter concerning London Airport which is of very urgent importance—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do my best during business questions, and I try to call almost all hon. Members who rise immediately after the business statement. However hon. Members have a habit of rising subsequently with the result that, if I were to call everyone, business questions could go on for ever. I think that we must move on now.

EEC MINISTERIAL MEETINGS

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Davies): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to make a statement on meetings of the Council of the Eurapean Communities since my last statement a fortnight ago. There have been two meetings of Finance Ministers and one each of Foreign, Agriculture and Social Affairs Ministers.
External trade agreements have been concluded with India and Brazil. There has been further consideration of agreements with Mediterranean countries and with those former members of EFTA that have not acceded to the Communities, and of Community adherence to the International Sugar Agreement; work on the simplification of Customs procedures is to be pursued; the improvement of the CAP was discussed, as was a programme for consumer protection; the Community budget for 1974 was finalised at a level slightly lower than in the current year but within the total figure the Social Fund has been increased by about £19 million—45 million units of account—as already agreed.
This week's meeting of Foreign Ministers was dominated by the problems of energy and the Regional Development Fund. No agreement was reached but the Council agreed to resume the discussion not later than 7th January next year. My right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary gave a good deal of information on these matters to the House at Question Time yesterday.
Finance Ministers agreed a series of measures defining the content of a second stage of Economic and Monetary Union to apply from 1974 on: A resolution on the move to a second stage was also broadly agreed but since it included references to the setting up of the Regional Development Fund and the work to be undertaken on energy matters, it was deferred until those issues were settled.
The Council has agreed on a programme of action in the field of industrial and technological policy, in accordance with the decision taken at the Paris Summit. The Commission has been charged with submitting draft Directives.
Social Affairs Ministers agreed on a programme of action to be embodied in


a Council Resolution. The programme represents a major stage in the development of the Community social policy envisaged at the Paris Summit.

Mr. Peter Shore: The House will be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that statement, cheerless though it is.
Before turning to the major matters of energy and the regional development fund, which are rightly singled out as the most important matters under discussion, may I clear two preliminary points with the right hon. Gentleman?
In relation to the trade agreement with India, can he say whether he has managed to secure a no-change position in the British tariff on imported Indian tobacco and on Indian jute manufacturers—and, incidentally, I hope that the jute position will be the same for Bangladesh?
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether any agreement has been reached, in the talks on the International Sugar Agreement, on the major principles for changing the common agricultural policy in relation to sugar which both sides of this House agreed following our debate a month or so ago?
Turning to the heart of these discussions, may I first ask the right hon. Gentleman why it is that the German Government, at this very late stage in the talks on the Regional Development Fund, have apparently put forward figures which are so much lower than those which had previously been discussed and well below the level of the right hon. Gentleman's anticipation up till only a few days ago? Is it because this is a retaliation against the very unforthcoming British position on the medium-or short-term response to the oil crisis facing Western Europe? If it is, does he think that by refusing to agree to a draft regulation by the Commission to furnish statistical information on oil supply in Britain, by vetoing this proposal, he will persuade the Germans to open their purse and make the money available?
Why is it so important to this country that we should have a large Regional Development Fund? Is not the first reason the need felt to offset the crippling and disproportionate payment this country has to make to the CAP and the dispro-

portionate size of the CAP in the totality of Community expenditure? Is it not the case that even if the whole original Commission proposal, which now seems far removed from the possibilities of acceptance, were to be agreed, the budget for the next three years of the regional fund would be no more than 3,000 million units of account as against the more than 12,000 million payment under the CAP?
Does not the right hon. Gentleman now consider that it would have been far better for this country to have taken on these serious matters long before the Treaty of Accession was signed and to have secured for this country proper terms so that he would not now have to try to persuade, from a position of appalling weakness, other countries to be generous to this country?

Mr. Davies: The right hon. Gentleman is seriously at fault on his last point. We have always held, and many hon. Members on both sides of the House have believed, that the appropriate way to deal with imperfections within the Community—if imperfections there are, and I do not dissent from that—is to handle them from within. We still firmly believe that this is right, that the right way to deal with problems of improvement of the Community's activity is as a member. I have little doubt that that conclusion is correct.
With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's specific points, I can inform the right hon. Gentleman on the precise details of the Indian agreement—but suffice to say now that the arrangements entered into for unmanufactured tobacco and jute from India are wholly satisfactory and meet our requirements and those of the Indians. I shall give the right hon. Gentleman precise details separately. It is my firm expectation that similar arrangements as those entered into with India will be negotiated with Bangladesh.
The right hon. Gentleman inquired about the rate of work developing in considering the Commission's CAP proposals. This will continue for some time. The matter requires much discussion among agricultural Ministers, but I sincerely hope that by the time we come to consider agricultural questions, such as the level of agricultural prices,


next year, these matters will have been satisfactorily dealt with.
The principal point on which the right hon. Gentleman concentrates is the whole question of the regional development fund and energy. He is right; these were clearly the dominant issues, as I said in my statement. I do not believe that the German reaction to the Commission's proposals was dictated by a desire for retaliation. That would not have been logical in the circumstances, since at the Summit meeting in Copenhagen it was quite clear that the Germans, like all other members of the Community, were well satisfied with the conclusions reached at the Summit. It would therefore be wrong to imagine that there was a feeling of resentment which the Germans sought to carry through to the regional development issue.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Germans' reaction was both disappointing and, in some ways, very surprising at that stage, in view of all that had gone before. It was perhaps dictated more by considerable anxiety about the evolution of the European economies generally and the German economy in particular, in the light of the clear implications of energy costs for all those economies.
On the question of effectiveness to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—on the energy problem as against the regional problem—the right hon. Gentleman would be wrong to imagine that the proposals before us were simply confined to providing information. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs made clear that he had promised that in any case information would be forthcoming to make the work go forward. Action on this included setting up a high-level committee with the task of operating something in the nature of at least a guidance service on the terms of energy use in the Community.
The requirement for a major regional development fund is not Britain's alone—far from it. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman will remember that, well before our membership of the EEC, it was not only included in the Treaty of Rome, as a major requirement but was specifically regarded as one of the principal

issues at the Paris Summit meeting in October 1972.
The reason is that it is realised that it is not just in Britain but in practically every country that there are major regional disparities which militate against the social evolution of the Community and against the possibility of attaining an economic and monetary union of the kind which the Community has in mind. The requirement to achieve a major regional development fund applies to the Community as a whole, and is not restricted to a single country or even to three countries.
With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's remarks about the relationship of the figures now being considered to the total figures involved in the CAP, I agree with him that there is still a great contrast. It is one of the objectives that the fund, when set up, should not merely be large at the outset but should progressively become greater and greater because it has to meet a major problem in the Community. It is to that purpose that the Government will be arguing in the course of the ensuing meetings.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: Is not it obvious that a project as big as the regional development fund is likely to be attended by much haggling and argument? As West Germany now holds more than half the total financial reserves in the Community, is it not also clear that Germany's reservations are not due to a shortage of money but perhaps to Cabinet disputes which are likely to be resolved as soon as the German Cabinet realises the strength of feeling on the matter in this country?

Mr. Davies: It is undoubtedly true that the German Cabinet is very concerned about the future development of its own economy and the economies of other member States in Europe resulting from the cost of oil. The German Government equally is deeply concerned at the thought of being perhaps alone in resisting the institution of the regional development fund on the kind of scale which the Commission has proposed. That should be a powerful factor in influencing German thinking on the matter. I hope that by the time we resume on 7th January—if that be the date—there will be a possibility of reaching agreement.

Mr. Russell Johnston: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that despite the assurances which he gave to the right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore), there is considerable Press speculation to the effect that the German position represents a German response to the British attitude on energy sharing in the Community? Will he make that point quite clear?
Secondly, what I find difficult to understand is that the German position came as such a shock and surprise. Everyone knew that the Germans were unenthusiastic about the regional proposals because of the burden which these would lay on them, but no one understood that the position which the Germans would finally take up would be so hard. Has there been dialogue and contact with the German Government in recent months to the developing attitude in Germany to this matter?

Mr. Davies: Despite Press speculation, I do not believe that the position taken up by the German representative at the Council meeting earlier this week was the result of a feeling of resentment against any British attitude on the energy front. On the contrary, I do not believe that at that stage it was a vital issue in the Germans' mind, in view of the decisions taken at the Summit. Regarding the degree of surprise expressed at the German reaction, the hon. Gentleman has instanced the point. I can assure him that there has been continuous discussion. But the inadequacy of the German approach was something of a surprise to us and other members.

Mr. Powell: Do not my right hon. Friend and his colleagues in the Government feel the humiliation of asking the Germans and other nations to put up a little more money to enable us to help our own regions and our own people?

Mr. Davies: I do not agree with my right hon. Friend about this matter. The Community is an organisation which requires inputs, support and contributions of all kinds from its members and offers advantages to its members. Nothing would be further from the truth than to imagine that in this respect we are holding out a begging bowl. We are concerned with a major feature of Community policy, the setting up of a proper

regional organisation and policy in the Community to ovecome what is a Community-wide problem. We are concerned with that, not with seeking to extract a few extra Deutschemarks.

Mr. Judd: Does the Minister appreciate that many right hon. and hon. Members are deeply concerned about the lack of detailed information about arrangements with India and Bangladesh? Does he realise that there is growing anxiety about the progress of negotiations on the generalised scheme of preferences and the implications for the relationship of the EEC to the Third World as a whole, which many right hon. and hon. Members believe is becoming an increasingly important and sensitive major political issue? Can he guarantee that we shall have full and detailed statements before irrevocable steps are taken in those directions?

Mr. Davies: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the fullest information will be given on the arrangements entered into with India and Bangladesh and on the Community's GSP arrangements as from the beginning of next year. I think that when the hon. Gentleman has the opportunity to study both those matters he will not be dissatisfied. In fact, the GSP constitutes from the Community's point of view a big step forward overall in relation to the interests of the developing world.

Mr. Wilkinson: My right hon. Friend has spoken of India and Bangladesh. Would the Government support the accession of other Asian Commonwealth countries or former Commonwealth countries to the external trade agreements? With regard to the question of regional assistance, does not my right hon. Friend agree that the Community is very much a matter of give and take, and that the United Kingdom provides a great deal of industrial and technological expertise to Germany in various joint collaborative ventures in which we are engaged?

Mr. Davies: The identity document which emerged from the Summit meeting at Copenhagen made specific reference to those countries which are broadly classed within the framework of the Declaration of Intent under the Treaty of Accession. The intention has been expressed, and is reiterated, to seek with


those countries agreements which are favourable both to them and to the Community. I think that the Indian agreement is the first such case. Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries will be involved. Malaysia and all those countries will have a major interest in the GSP scheme.
As for the counterparts to the Regional Development Fund, I agree with what my hon. Friend says. The enormous advantages which Germany enjoys in her external trade as a result of membership of the Community, not least in this country, should not be forgotten either.

Mr. Jay: As the Government are threatening to withdraw from our development areas regional employment premium payments, which are now running at £90 million a year, will the Minister give a firm assurance that he will not accept a lesser annual payment than that from the so-called regional fund?

Mr. Davies: To set the record straight, the present Government, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said on many occasions, have done nothing but to follow the precise intent stated by the former Government on the REP. Therefore, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's point is very pertinent. But I can assure him that it is not the Government's intention to vary what they have already said on the subject of the REP.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Whilst one can understand German feeling about the regional fund, as they are maximum contributors and minimum beneficiaries, is not that exactly the British position in regard to the common agricultural policy? Is not the logic of the position, therefore, that a further initiative should now be taken for a more realistic and radical appraisal of the common agricultural policy than has so far been envisaged?

Mr. Davies: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has always made it clear that he regards the report of the Commission on the improvement of the common agricultural policy as only a first step, and that it should be followed by a progressive review of the policy as time goes on. I do not think that there can be any doubt of the Government's intentions in that respect.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will certainly call the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), but I hope first to have a chance to call some other hon. Members from the benches behind him.

Mr. John Mendelson: Does not the Minister realise that there is a widespread feeling throughout the country that the whole policy he is pursuing is breaking down and coming apart in every possible way? Will he not take the House of Commons properly into the Government's confidence and meet that expression of feeling throughout the country? Does he recall that in the summer, also just a day before the House adjourned he told the House and the country that he had been informed about a supplementary budget for the common agricultural policy, amounting to £33 million, only eight hours before he agreed to that supplementary budget? Would it not have been wiser not to be so hasty in paying out from the funds of this country for the common agricultural policy but to hold back on it and say, "Let us see what happens to other policies, like the regional policy and the social fund, which might be of some slight benefit to this country"? Will he now say that he will re-cast the Government's policy on these matters and make a new start which will make it quite clear that unless other countries live up to the expectations of the Government we shall not pay into those funds to which we have been committed?

Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. I believe that the Government will achieve from the membership of the Community the objectives which they sought I equally believe that on the narrower, immediate question of the constitution of a regional fund the intention we have expressed will be realised. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's views.
At the time of the supplementary budget to which the hon. Gentleman referred, I pointed out that it was not a departure in budgeting of the kind to which this House is accustomed, in that it simply reflected policy decisions which had been taken previously, and to which the House was privy.

Dame Joan Vickers: Yesterday I was in Paris discussing with the Germans and


others the question of regional policy. Does not my right hon. Friend think that as the Germans destroyed so many of our cities, including the city of Plymouth, it is only right that they should pay some compensation now?

Mr. Davies: It would be a great pity if the purposes and future of the Community were to be established on the basis of compensation and recompense for past matters. The Community is constituted as a forward-looking organisation seeking to devise a better, more secure and more prosperous order in Europe. That is certainly the basis on which I bend my mind when seeking to achieve our objectives.

Mr. Fernyhough: Does the Minister realise that his continued optimism about the eventual outcome of our association with the EEC is most surprising to anyone who gives deep thought to the position? He repeatedly comes back and turns defeats into victories. Is it not humiliating, as the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) said, that he and the Foreign Secretary have to be there with their begging bowl at a time when massive British investment, as Le Monde reported yesterday, is being made in Brussels and in France in particular?
Would it not have been better if those massive British investments which have been put into the EEC had been put into our own regions—and then we would have saved the right hon. Gentleman the trouble and humiliation of having to go almost on his knees to get a fund which the Government promised the British people they would get when they took us into the Common Market?

Mr. Davies: I do not think that I should add to what I said earlier on the subject. The right hon. Gentleman's outburst does no credit to himself or, indeed, to any of us. The fact is that there is no question of a begging bowl and I should like very sharply to reject that suggestion.

Mr. Body: As my right hon. Friend will be aware of what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary told the House yesterday afternoon—that there was a plan to make the Common Market into a free trade area—will he tell the House now

who are the authors of this plan, whether the plan has the support of M. Pompidou, and on what grounds can this principle of a large free trade area be reconciled with the principle of Community preference? Finally, is my right hon. Friend aware that, if this plan is likely to come about, even I, who have not been backward in my views about the Common Market, will at last be reconciled to the advantages of the European Community?

Mr. Davies: I do not know where the thought of the conversion of the Community into a free trade area has emerged. It certainly is not to my mind a likely project. Perhaps it is an interpretation of the thought that a free trade area is a minimal part of the existing plans of the Community itself.

Mr. English: In the light of the Chancellor's statement, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether he asked permission in Brussels to cut by 10 per cent. that portion of our public expenditure which results from our entry into the EEC?

Mr. Davies: I am not clear about the precise part of public expenditure to which the hon. Gentleman refers. One of the issues which the hon. Gentleman will have noticed was involved in my statement was that referring to the budget, which he will have noticed is less this year than it was last year. Perhaps this is what he meant.

Dame Irene Ward: As regards this controversy which has arisen over the Regional Development Fund, had there been any indication previously that this might be the attitude of West Germany, or does my right hon. Friend think that it is some sort of Cabinet controversy in that country, taking the sort of line that we sometimes do—put something out to get something over?
As my right hon. Friend has not been in the House of Commons for all that long, may I ask him whether he is aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) stated many months ago to me personally and publicly that he would do nothing for the regions, so I wipe him out?

Mr. Davies: There was never any real doubt that the Germans were markedly


less enthusiastic than ourselves on the subject of the establishment of a Regional Development Fund. What constituted the surprise was that they should have proved as reticent as they were.
I have been aware of the reluctance of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) to consider the problems of regional policy, even nationally, as being one warranting major effort by the Government.

Mr. John Morris: Would I be right in assuming that the proposed figure of £1,250 million for the Regional Development Fund is the Government's sticking point—or, if it is not, is the Commission's £1,000 million the sticking point?

Mr. Davies: I think that I would be unwise to negotiate across the Floor of the House in the way that the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggests that I should.

Sir Gilbert Longden: As the common agricultural policy, until its terms can be renegotiated, which we all hope will be soon—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—my right hon. Friend will be well aware that I have from the very start hoped that the common agricultural policy terms would be renegotiated. Since it places a heavy burden upon our country, is it not rather surprising that so many hon. Members on both sides of the House, including two right hon. Members, should denigrate my right hon. Friend's efforts to get something for the regions from the regional policy? Will my right hon. Friend take it from me that the large majority of hon. Members who are normally on this side of the House are behind him in his efforts and wish him well?

Mr. Davies: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for those remarks. I absolutely agree with him. There has never been any doubt at all that the Government had firmly in mind the improvement of the common agricultural policy, but they believed most substantially that they would do that much more effectively—and it looks as though they will, from inside the Community—than from outside.

Mr. Spearing: My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West (Mr. Judd) mentioned the generalised system of preferences, but this was not mentioned

in his statement by the right hon. Gentleman. Will he confirm that this agreement has to come into force from 1st January, that it was contained in a draft regulation placed before the Council of Ministers by the Commission, and that if it were to be adopted it would mean that handicrafts, edible coconut oil and jute would be disadvantaged in terms of entry into this country from ex-Commonwealth territories, whatever the general effects may be as outlined in the right hon. Gentleman's reply?

Mr. Davies: The only reason it was not included in the statement was that, broadly speaking, the Council had dealt with it previously. I referred to it in the last statement that I made to the House. There are a number of small points to be clarified before it is finalised. That will be done before 1st January. What one should be concerned with is the overall balance of benefit of the GSP scheme. That I believe from the Community standpoint is very satisfactory.

Mr. Michael Foot: Will the right hon. Gentleman clear up one aspect of these combined negotiations at Copenhagen and Brussels which still mystifies me and, perhaps, some others?
It is suggested, as I understand the Minister's statements today and the reports which have been made, that to deal with the derisory figure that has so far been offered for a regional fund the sanction—if that is the proper word—which the Government propose to use or to invoke to secure alteration by 7th January to this state of affairs is to hold up the discussions or the procedures agreed in Copenhagen about the energy arrangements.
If it is true, as my hon. Friend suggested, that that agreement in Copenhagen is solely an agreement by a committee reporting on statistics, then it is not a very formidable deterrent. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. If, on the other hand, the agreement in Copenhagen is a further and more far-reaching arrangement about energy, which might touch not merely immediate matters but such major matters as the future disposal of oil supplies from the North Sea, that would be vastly different, and I presume that the Government are opposed to proceeding with such discussions as that.
Therefore, I hope that the Government will not be entrapped into having to agree to what they objected to at Copenhagen about energy because somebody comes along with a slightly better figure on the regional account.
In view of these considerations, which are of the highest possible importance in our present circumstances for the future of this country, will the right hon. Gentleman give me an absolute assurance, without any qualification whatever, that neither in Brussels nor at the Summit, nor anywhere else, will any agreement be made by Her Majesty's Government affecting the long-term disposal of oil supplies from the North Sea or the Celtic seas to this country? Will the right hon. Gentleman give an absolute assurance that no commitment whatever in any form, or any undertaking which might lead to a later commitment, will be made without the House giving the authority to the Minister to do that? Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate—I hope that he does—that it is on that clear understanding that any discussions on this matter should take place with Governments in Europe?

Mr. Davies: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it is absolutely not part of the Government's intention in any way or form to alienate the advantage of

interest in oil from the North Sea or Celtic Sea.

Mr. Douglas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On the occasions that we have statements from the right hon. Gentleman regarding meetings in Europe, could you, Mr. Speaker, consider expediting the reports from Committees of this House so that we might deal with those statements more in keeping with the need to ensure the right of right hon. and hon. Members to have a more suitable and adequate discussion of such matters?

Mr. Speaker: I will have regard to what the hon. Gentleman said. The length of time that I allowed on supplementaries today is some indication of my view of the matter.

BILL PRESENTED

PET ANIMALS ACT 1951 (AMENDMENT)

Sir Ronald Russell, supported by Mr. Burden, Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison, Mr. Edward Milne, Mr. Harold Gurden, Sir John Hall, Dr. Shirley Summerskill and Mr. John Pardoe, presented a Bill to amend the Pet Animals Act 1951; And the same was read the First time and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 25th January and to be printed [Bill 59].

Orders of the Day — SIR THOMAS GEORGE BARNETT COCKS, KCB, OBE

4.42 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): I beg to move,
That Mr. Speaker be requested to convey to Sir Thomas George Barnett Cocks, KCB, OBE, on his retirement from the Office of Clerk of this House, the expression of Members' deep appreciation of the distinguished services which he has rendered to this House in the conduct of its business during the last forty-three years, and their gratitude for his unique contribution in disseminating British practices and procedures.
This motion in the names of the Prime Minister, the Leaders of the Opposition Parties and myself, taken as it is in the shadow of sombre events and changes, provides us with an opportunity of reminding ourselves of happier aspects of the House which do not change and our dependence on the devoted services of the permanent Officers of the House and in particular on the long and honoured line of Clerks who have over so many years—indeed over several centuries—served Parliament so well.
Sir Barnett himself has reminded us in the past about the time when he first entered the Clerk's Department in 1931, at a time when the Stationery Office still issued sharpened quills to the House and when we used to burn 80 tons of coal a week in the winter. He spoke of having been taught his parliamentary practice by men who had been here in Gladstone's day—the tradition recorded by Hatsell, Erskine May and Campion. Sir Barnett has kept the best traditions of the House alive and growing, but I do not think that he would wish me to lay too much stress on the traditional side of his services to the House. I recall with pleasure an exchange he once had, during evidence that he was giving to a Select Committee on Procedure, with my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) about new procedure for electing a Speaker. The hon. Lady queried whether it would not be a big change to alter a procedure dating back to 1300, to which Sir Barnett replied, a little tongue in cheek, I suspect:

The Clerks usually are rather revolutionary in their outlook. They would have no objection to a change however drastic.
Nor has Sir Barnett confined this willingness to change to such minor matters as his advocacy of getting rid of wigs, gowns, and other nineteenth century formalities. On far more fundamental points he has been willing, like his predecessors, to look to the interests of parliamentary Government in its widest context. In 1949 he was one of the original Clerks to go to Strasbourg. He has created a manual of procedure for the Council of Europe and WEU. He is the author of an authoritative handbook on the procedures of the European Assembly.
Important though Sir Barnett's services to the future and to other parliamentary institutions will, I am sure, prove to have been, however, I think it must be with reference to his past services here that I must conclude. For more thon 40 years in the Clerk's Department, and for 12 years in the exacting post of the Clerk of the House, he has given authoritative, impartial and invariably courteous advice to hon. Members of all parties. He has been a great source of procedural wisdom in day-to-day business as well as in evidence to Select Committees and the revisions of Erskine May.
Sir Barnett has always been helpful to the Front Benches, although I fancy he has, quite rightly, been biased in favour of the individual Member. Obviously this is right, and the back benchers have special reason to be grateful to him.
This is essentially a personal occasion on which the House pays its tribute to a dedicated public servant. Beyond this, however, as we wish him a long, happy and active retirement in the company of his wife and family, we recognise in him a great tradition of public service to this House—a tradition which he so ably represented and which he hands on, enhanced, to his successor.

4.46 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: In the unavoidable absence of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition I have been asked to associate my right hon. and hon. Friends very warmly with the motion. We wish, too, Mr. Speaker, that you will convey to the Clerk of the House on his pending retirement the deep


appreciation and, indeed, the affection of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
There are two parts to the motion. One refers to Sir Barnett's duties as Clerk of the House in the more domestic sense. The latter part refers to his contribution to the wider study of the institution of Parliament throughout the Commonwealth and the world. On the first part, all my hon. Friends on the back benches have found in Sir Barnett Cocks a very willing helper and counsellor on matters of procedure, when asking him to connive at or approve of what was afoot. He has lent his wide experience and knowledge of procedure and the possibilities of procedure of this House to private Members, who had their own private schemes, to make the most of their opportunities. We always look for that in a Clerk of the House. We have regarded the Clerk as a friend and counsellor as well as the Clerk of the House itself.
On the second part of the motion, it is appropriate to say that Sir Barnett has not only been an Officer of the House but one of the most persuasive and convinced exponents of the institution of Parliament. He has not only a strong feeling of affection for the House but a deep understanding of the social change brought about through a representative Parliament in a free society.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to some of his works on the parliamentary institutions both here and in Europe, but the Opposition noticed with particular appreciation the sort of thing that Sir Barnett did in 1952, when he wrote, in conjunction with a former Librarian, a book entitled "The People's Conscience", when he gave us a description of the work of Select Committees of this House in the nineteenth century, investigating some of the deeper inequalities and shortcomings of society at that time. He was editor of the Erskine May 18th Edition in 1971 and has in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, here and overseas, lent his wide experience and knowledge to his opposite numbers and other colleagues from Commonwealth Parliaments on matters of procedure and practice in this House.
Now that Sir Barnett is to be released from the fatigue and restraints of service to this House, I am sure that it is our wish that he may be moved to tell us

more about the parliamentary institution as he has seen it for the last 43 years. Those of us working here, engaged in the political and parliamentary struggle, probably do not always appreciate the real significance of the institution of Parliament. I believe that the institution of Parliament has to be defended in a world which is not creating new parliamentary democracies and where many of those that exist are losing ground in the face of deep-seated forces for the overthrow of representative government. I look forward to seeing from Sir Barnett a freer expression of his views of the institution of Parliament.
I am not in favour of retirement. I believe that retirement is one of the few opportunities in life for looking forward. It is not until one reaches that stage that one takes stock of life and says, "What can I now do for the rest of my time?" I am sure that the whole House wishes the Clerk of the House a long retirement and a fruitful and happy time, one in which we can look for further wise comments and counsel on the work we do in the House of Commons.

4.51 p.m.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe: It is with very great pleasure that I associate my right hon. Friends with the gratitude we all feel to Sir Barnett Cocks for his very long and equally distinguished period of service to this House and wish him and Lady Cocks a very happy and fruitful retirement. As with the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), I hope that retirement will not preclude Sir Barnett from pursuing matters literal and political, which we shall study with very careful attention.
The Clerk of the House has perhaps the unique distinction of being the first official with whom a Member comes into contact. He has very great power because it is not until he has successfully delivered the oath that we are entitled to draw our salaries. He himself has to take an oath
to make true entries, remembrances, and journals of the things done and passed in the House of Commons.
It is daunting to think of the millions of words and the hundreds of thousands of motions which Sir Barnett has truly recorded for all time. One can only hope that he showed discretion in sub-editing.
The duty of the Clerk of the House is to assist Mr. Speaker and advise Members on the proceedings of the House. From that, one might aduce that Mr. Speaker requires no advice and Members no assistance. But I suspect that both are required and I know from my own experience that both have been freely given.
We want not only to thank Sir Barnett for his very great courtesy and his expertise, but to thank also all the Clerks who serve with him and are part of the team. I particularly remember the memoranda of the evidence, both written and oral, which he tendered on highly intricate points of law to the Select Committee on Procedure and which were always a very great joy and experience to read.
I must here declare an interest. The Boundary Commissioners were kind enough to include the town of Bideford in my constituency, which happens to be Sir Barnett's birth place, and I have reason to believe that he will repair there with some frequency in future. Whether he will do that on a sufficiently permanent basis to be enrolled on the electoral register, I do not know. But even if that were so it would be improper for me to ask him what his intentions might subsequently be. However, as far as I am concerned, unlike the rest of the House, I shall from time to time have him locally available for me to receive first-hand advice on parliamentary matters, and I must warn him that on his retirement I intend to avail myself of it.
Today, we thank a very distinguished and loyal servant of this House. We thank him for what he has done and wish him and Lady Cocks a very happy retirement. He takes with him the good wishes of the whole House.

4.54 p.m.

Sir Robin Turton: I must admit that when I decided, seven years ago, not to seek re-election the last thing I expected was that I would outlast the Clerk of the House. Therefore, it puts me in a difficult position. Looking around me, I see that the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss), my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and I represent the sole survivors of what one might describe as the "pre-Cocks era" of Parliament.

But I would like to add my tribute to the services that the Clerk has given to back benchers and to Chairmen of Committees during his service in the House. Sir Barnett has always marked that service by exceptional courtesy.
I have had more intimate experience of him because, Mr. Speaker, in spring 1959 one of your predecessors sent Sir Barnett, the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) and myself to Ghana to present a Speaker's Chair to the National Assembly. I found there that Sir Barnett was very helpful in dealing with some of the peculiar informalities to which we were subjected.
As we advanced to present the Chair in the Ghanaian National Assembly, we were led up by the Assembly's Serjeant at Arms, who had held similar office in the Ghanaian constabulary. As we advanced near the Table—I was following immediately behind Sir Barnett—I heard a whispered order, "About turn, quick march", and whereupon obeyed. But it is somewhat difficult when one is in close single file, as Sir Barnett, I and the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East, were to retire from a Chamber in such circumstances. I inquired what was wrong when we got outside, and the Serjeant at Arms explained that he had forgotten the Mace. We then started the procession all over again. This was one of the informalities of the occasion which I have not previously reported to the House.
The other informality has already been reported by the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East. After Sir Barnett, the right hon. Gentleman and I had delivered our message of presentation. Dr. Nkrumah and his Cabinet dashed down from the Government benches, picked up the Speaker's Chair, put it on their shoulders, took it up to the dais and thrust Mr. Speaker into it in a rather rougher manner than that in which you, Mr. Speaker, came into the Chair of this House.
I should like to pay tribute to the way in which Sir Barnett, in his capacity of Clerk of the House, has helped the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in all the work that it does, particularly in the very nice and informal way in which he and Lady Cocks have entertained delegates at the seminars in their own


residence here in the Palace of Westminster. It has made them the friends not only of the British Parliament but of Members of Parliament throughout the Commonwealth.
Like the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), I hope that when Sir Barnett retires he will give us a little bit more than he has given us in the dusty pages of Erskine May. He knows more about the law of contempt than, I believe, anyone else in the country. It is a subject of which the House is, I often think, in some submissions to you, Mr. Speaker, woefully ignorant, and I think that we could learn a great deal from an explanation of what the law of contempt really is from the hands of Sir Barnett.
Finally, in the very difficult position which faces the House in the reform of procedure, it would be a great gain to us if he would tell us how we can so reform our procedure as to get more effective debate in Parliament and at the same time discharge the increasing responsibilities thrown on us from our entry into Europe, so that we can compress these debates into parliamentary time, fitting them into the ordinary timetable—perhaps a timetable which is not so prolonged as it is at present.
I wish Sir Barnett and his lady wife many years of retirement.

4.58 p.m.

Sir Geoffrey de Freitas: I wish to refer particularly to Sir Barnett Cocks' work for the Council of Europe. In a European international parliamentary assembly, inevitably the procedure is predominantly Continental. There are only two parliaments in the Consultative Assembly which have the Westminster system—the United Kingdom and Malta. Yet many of the best features in the procedure of the Consultative Assembly come from our House and are British.
It is to Sir Barnett, as the Leader of the House mentioned, that we owe the manual of the Assembly. It is short and extremely pleasant and easy to read. I read it from cover to cover on holiday while lying on golden sands washed by the Mediterranean—something I have never attempted to do with Erskine May. It is very much to our credit that an

eminent Englishman like Sir Barnett Cocks has been able to help Continental Members of Parliaments by giving the best from this country and mixing it with the best of their own.
I know that I speak for all those who have had the task of organising the debates in the Assembly of the Council of Europe—whether Belgian, British, Danish, French, Italian or Swiss—in thanking Sir Barnett for what he did behind the scenes to make easier the development of international multilingual parliamentary debate.

5.1 p.m.

Dame Irene Ward: I should like to add my good wishes and thanks to Sir Barnett. Recollecting the past, I think that he entered the Clerk's office in the same year as I entered Parliament. Therefore, it is a great pleasure to be here today to add my thanks and to extend good wishes to him.
We have been served marvellously by Sir Barnett. I think that he and the other Clerks of the House are the only people in this place with whom I never really had any arguments. At any rate, Sir Barnett has always been a good friend and adviser to me.
I think we all recognise that as Clerk of the House Sir Barnett has extended the contribution and service that he has rendered to the British Parliament to much wider spheres of activities during the time that I have been a Member of the House.
From time to time I have travelled about the world and spoken of our parliamentary system. It has always been a great pleasure for me, when I have tried to outline our procedure and the basis from which it stems, to say that the Clerks of the House, and Sir Barnett in particular, have played a fundamental part in our procedure. I doubt whether any country in the world owes so much of its parliamentary system to the basis from which the Clerks operate.
I am delighted to be here today to wish Sir Barnett and Lady Cocks a very happy retirement. I hope that he will write his memoirs or in some other way give us further advice. It is both a sad and a delightful occasion to add my


words to the tribute that the House of Commons is paying to Sir Barnett today.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. Michael English: My right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), as usual, made a most felicitous statement when he referred to the support that Sir Barnett had given to back benchers. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House who are particularly interested in parliamentary affairs would wish to be associated with that statement.
I, too, have a small story that I should like to tell. A former Leader of the House—I regret to say a former Labour Leader of the House—once developed the technically correct but nasty habit of laying procedural motions five minutes before the House rose on the night before they were due to be discussed. This made it somewhat difficult for hon. Members to put down amendments to them. But the Clerk solved this difficulty admirably. First, he drafted the motion concerned for the Leader of the House and then, for those who wished to put down amendments, he drafted the amendments so that they all appeared the next morning and could be discussed.
In this and in many other ways Sir Barnett Cocks has always taken care, as he always put it, to try to serve every hon. Member, whether a Minister or back bencher. We all recognise and appreciate that fact.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, nemine contradicente,
That Mr. Speaker be requested to convey to Sir Thomas George Barnett Cocks, K.C.B., O.B.E., on his retirement from the Office of Clerk of this House, the expression of Members' deep appreciation of the distinguished services which he has rendered to this House in the conduct of its business during the last forty-three years, and their gratitude for his unique contribution in disseminating British practices and procedures.

ADJOURNMENT (CHRISTMAS)

5.5 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): I beg to move,
That this House at its rising tomorrow do adjourn till Tuesday 15th January 1974.
As is the usual practice, Mr. Speaker, it may be for the conveniece of the

House if I listen to the debate and reply at the end.

5.6 p.m.

Mr. Laurie Pavitt: I hope that the House will not pass the motion until we have had an assurance about the position of the disabled and people in need of social services—those with problems of mental health, for example—as a result of the crisis in power, energy and the economy.
Recently we had a statement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry which went some way towards relieving the problem of mobility for the disabled. Unfortunately, it did not go far enough. Because of the way that petrol is being organised before rationing, the disabled who are getting about by using their own disablement vehicles or are being ferried by family and friends, will find mobility during the Christmas period more important than at other times, but may find themselves housebound because petrol stations will not be open.
If we are to rise without this matter being resolved, may I ask whether the Secretary of State will come to the House tomorrow and announce emergency plans for certain regional or district depots where those in need of transport because of their disablement can be assured of petrol supplies?
The Prime Minister announced that petrol rationing would not come in before 1st January. Therefore, I presume that if petrol rationing is to come in immediately after 1st January the House will be recalled. But we must resolve the uncertainty for local authority social service departments during the Christmas recess.
Unfortunately, the Government drew up their list of priorities from the 1959 list with the result that they made a bad judgment between social services organised by local authorities and those organised and run by voluntary organisations.
Form P.1 will enable voluntary associations with special schemes for the disabled and chronic sick to get extra petrol supplies. But the social service departments which, since the Seebohm reforms, have had a large number of additional statutory responsibilities placed upon them, are not entitled to apply for extra petrol on Form P.1. If this matter is


not resolved before we recess for Christmas, directors of social service departments in many boroughs will be considerably concerned about their important statutory services should petrol rationing be introduced early in the New Year. Of especial importance is the liability upon local authorities for the mental health officer, who at weekends and after 5 p.m. has placed upon him statutory responsibilities in case of acute mental illness. He may then be, because of the crisis, unable to fulfil his obligations, with all the consequences that that may entail should a mental breakdown occur in those hours.
On the same theme I have had representations from the Brent Council of Social Service. Those representations have also been sent to the Department. I have had representations from the National Council of Social Service about the way in which it will be very difficult in the coming few months, if the present situation continues, for it to fulfil its obligations. The Jewish Board of Guardians, for example, may have to entirely step down from some of its very responsible social service work.
Therefore, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House will deal with these matters so that the House can be satisfied or, alternatively, give an assurance that before the House rises some of these problems will be solved.
My last point is of great concern to us all. The Government's pronouncement of the three-day week, which will affect electricity and heating supplies, will have a tremendous effect upon the social services of local authorities for the elderly. If there is one time of the year when the elderly should receive maximum consideration it is over the Christmas period. A three-day week for the social services departments of local authorities, involving the whole problem of meals on wheels, home helps and the ancillary services for the elderly, will mean great difficulties. I am confident that they will brilliantly seek to overcome the difficulties and that in spite of the difficulties, somehow or other the meals will get through and the home helps will arrive, and that we shall not be faced with the problem of putting elderly people into geriatric wards of hospitals merely because the economic crisis does not permit the community to do its job.
These are matters of urgency. If the House were to rise for the Christmas Recess without resolving these difficulties, we should be retiring for our own enjoyment but with a heavy responsibility on our hands for a large number of people who are in need, although a relatively small section of the community, being very much in the cold for a cold Christmas.

5.12 p.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn: I shall be brief, in order to keep the debate as short as possible. We are going on a Christmas Recess against one of the worst economic backgrounds that we have ever experienced. Firstly, there is a genuine anxiety among a number of small businessmen, shopkeepers and hairdressers about flexibility of hours and working and the allocation of electricity. It is up to my right hon. Friend and the Government to think very carefully as to how best these small businesses, shops and industries can be helped, simply by allowing a degree of flexibility in the orders.
Secondly, it is very difficult for people who run small businesses to know exactly what they ought and ought not to be doing. Many of us have received letters and delegations on this subject. I ask my right hon. Friend to consider very carefully the means of dissemination of information from the Government down to the ordinary shopkeeper. I know from experience that if a shopkeeper tries to obtain information over the telephone, he seldom gets a reply as the telephone line is engaged. He also has no means of checking whether he is acting within the framework of the law.
These are matters about which people want to know. First, they want to be allowed to give their views as to how they could run their business using the same amount of power but in a more practical and an economic and better way. Secondly, they want a system whereby they can rapidly get advice on what they ought to do and how best their ideas on flexibility could be met under the existing regulations.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Marks: The House should not adjourn without considering the statement issued


today by the Minister of Transport Industries on his reconsideration of the Greater Manchester passenger transport scheme.
The Leader of the House will be aware that throughout this Session hon. Members on both sides of the House, from the whole of the new Greater Manchester, have been pressing the Minister to make a statement on this vitally urgent matter. It is not simply a matter which affects my constituency. It affects 2 million people who live in what is the most populous conurbation outside London. For seven years the South-East Lancashire/North-East Cheshire Passenger Transport Executive has worked with the Ministry of Transport in preparing plans for the development of an efficient passenger transport service in the Greater Manchester area, which would include a tunnel linking the northern and southern railway termini of the city. The Minister accepted the cost-benefit analysis of the passenger transport authority. The grants for the research were made during the seven years. But in the summer the Minister announced that grant would not be available to start the work on the scheme in 1974–75, as had been anticipated.
There has been a tremendous outcry from the whole area, from industry, trade unions and local authorities. The Minister for Transport Industries met representatives of the Passenger Transport Executive and promised to reconsider the decision. Today I received a reply to a Written Question at 4.30 p.m., with a statement by the Minister in which he gives a very confused decision, a decision which he ought to have made more orderly so that questions could have been put upon it. He said:
The appraisal of the scheme has taken many months. It is costly and the economic rate of return, particularly on the tunnel, is low.
This planning has been taking place not simply by the SELNEC Passenger Transport Executive, the plans being then handed over to the Ministry during the summer. The planning, and the costbenelit analysis that went with it, has been worked out with the Ministry throughout the seven years. I deny that the cost-benefit is low, as I have no doubt that the Passenger Transport Executive will deny it tonight.
The Minister went on to say,
By the time a start could be made on such a project, however, the new system of transport grants proposed in the Local Government Bill should have been introduced It will then be for the Greater Manchester Council to consider what public transport investment should be included in the Transport Policy and Programme which they will have to submit as a basis for grant.
The Minister also said that
the merits of the scheme do not in themselves justify making additional resources available to Manchester".
In view of the vast amount of information that the Minister has received and the almost unanimous support—I except the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Redmond) in this matter—of local authorities, Members of Parliament and business interests in the area, to the effect that this was necessary and urgent, I do not believe that the Minister's reply is acceptable.

Mr. Robert Redmond: The hon. Gentleman has referred to me. I must point out that, so far as the industry of Bolton is concerned, it would very much like the Pic-Vic line. If, however, it was given a choice between the Pic-Vic line or route 225, a most important link, it would choose route 225, which gives industry a very good method of getting goods to Liverpool. That is the view of local industry. I support what my right hon. Friend the Minister has done. He has put the decision in the hands of local authority, where it belongs.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. Before the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) continues, I should like to say to him and to other hon. Members that speeches on an occasion such as this ought to refer constantly to the motion why the House should not rise from tomorrow until 15th January. Hon. Members should argue their case around that matter rather than producing the merits of a case, because, after all, we might not consider that business anyhow between now and 15th January. It would be better to keep as near as possible to the terms of the motion, otherwise we may be engaged on this matter longer than the House would wish.

Mr. Marks: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for pointing that out. But there should be an oral statement


by the Minister and a discussion of this question before the House rises. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Bolton, West referred to his community which is part of Greater Manchester, but he will agree that his point of view is an exceptional one in that area. Therefore, I should like to ask the Leader of the House to give us some assurance that, if it is not possible to debate this matter before the House rises, there will be an early opportunity to do so in the next Session.

5.30 p.m.

Dame Joan Vickers: This is the first time since 1955 that I have risen to speak on the motion for the Adjournment of the House, and I do so now because I have been unable to discover what is to happen to the work of 12,000 men in my constituency. The defence budget is to be cut and, although I raised this matter in the debate the other day, I still do not know how many days they will be able to work, what work they will be given or even whether there will be any employment. I gave my right hon. Friend notice that I would ask for more information today, and since then two other matters have been brought to my attention.
There is a lot of light industry in my area, and unless it is given some consideration it may be finished, but it is very difficult to get a satisfactory answer in the House or the DTI. There are approximately seven factories in an area which have been told they must work on the last three days of the week, but the shops will be open on the first three days of the week. As most of these factories employ women, the managements are wondering how they will be able to keep their employees because the women will need time off at weekends. I have been in touch with the Department of Trade and Industry. I was told, to my astonishment, that it has no power over the rotas which are arranged by the electricity boards, which have said that the local people and the chambers of commerce should get together. That was done but without success, so I got in touch with the manager of the South-West Electricity Board who advised me that the order has not yet been published. But, strange to say, he added that in any case it is not possible to change the rota even though the order has not yet been published.
Then there is the question of what happens if we die in the near future. I understand that undertakers have to work 24 hours a day seven days a week, but they are wondering what will happen if the coffins cannot be produced. There is a possibility that there will be hundreds of deceased persons and not enough coffins for them, with all the attendant complications. This is a very important matter, and unless there is an answer today it will be necessary to ask Parliament to be reconvened so that we do not have this very difficult problem among others on our hands. I hope that I shall get an answer on those points, and I hope that I shall be told what will happen to the people in the employment of the dockyard, what will happen about the factories and whether they will have a right of appeal which they do not have at the moment, and what will happen if we die between now and the time Parliament resumes.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: On the last motion we discussed some of the qualities of the House and the present debate is one of the three great safeguards in parliamentary procedure, the other two being consultation before legislation and no taxation before representation. We are now concerned with what is technically known as grievances before Adjournment, and I do not wish to support the motion now before the House until the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House has had an opportunity to reply to some points of which I have given notice.
Much has been said about the difficulty in which Parliament finds itself. As a relative newcomer here, I feel that the machinery is less wanting than the way in which we sometimes use it, which is probably true of any human organisation. We always try to change the machinery when we ought really to look more frequently at the way we use it. I wish to draw the attention of the Lord President to three matters on which he should offer some explanation to the House.
For the last three or four weeks during business questions I have pressed points related to the general scheme of preferences and to the discussions going on about draft regulations of the EEC. Indeed, together with my hon. Friend the


Member for Portsmouth, West (Mr. Judd) and supported by 100 hon. Members, I have tabled Early Day Motion No. 88 on the subject. That motion asks that the Lord President should find time for a debate before a final decision is made, but I do not want to go into its merits now, because this afternoon I am concerned with procedure.
A fortnight ago, the Lord President kindly said that he would look into the matter and see whether it was physically possible for this House to have a debate before a final decision was taken. Last Thursday, he said, as reported at col. 666,
As regards the improvements for the Community's generalised preference scheme, this is a continuing process with no final deadline."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 666.]
But, as I think he knows, his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, replying to the debate last Monday, said quite specifically, as reported at col. 1081,
The GSP scheme generally will come into force on 1st January."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1081.]
Furthermore, the Lord President will have heard his right hon. Friend the Minister responsible for European Affairs replying a few minutes ago to a question of mine. He said that the new scheme will come into force on 1st January and that final details are being ironed out, but that the main decisions have been made. In reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West, he said that he did not think he would be dissatisfied with the result.
I feel that the Leader of the House should have been frank and admitted that we had no time for a debate, that the matter had already been decided elsewhere and that it was inappropriate for us to discuss it now. But instead of that he made a statement which was quite contrary to what we heard in this House on Monday, and to what his right hon. Friend said only a few moments ago. I am quite prepared to accept that there is a fault in my reasoning, but the onus is upon the Leader of the House to explain what has gone wrong. He read last week what I think was a prepared statement, and there may have been a mistake.
This is not the only time that there has been a difference of opinion between members of the Government in the state-

ments which they have made in the House. Consistency in statements is of fundamental importance to the confidence which hon. Members have in each other and which the public has in this House. If we spend all our time checking what has been said by members of Governments, of whatever party, we shall be in grave difficulty. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture said in a debate on food prices earlier this month
No tariffs on food items have yet been imposed or increased under the common external tariff as a result of EEC entry."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th December 1973; Vol 866 c. 99.]
We are quite prepared to accept that, but a few days later we were told by the Under-Secretary of State to the Department of Trade and Industry that the present rate on beef was introduced on 30th April last. He went on:
The reason for repeating the duties and many others in which there is no change is simply to have a complete consolidated order, but that does not affect the issue."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1084.]
In other words he implied, and for all I know it is true, that food tariffs on beef already exist. That matter was not cleared up at the time.
This may seem a small matter, but tax on food, which was the subject of exchanges across the Floor of the House earlier today, is a matter of great importance to the British public. We shall be in considerable difficulties if Ministers make what appear to be conflicting statements and if a definitive statement, in this case made by the Parliamentary Secretary, is called into question by another Minister. I gave the Leader of the House notice about this matter and asked him to clear it up before we adjourn for the recess.
Some of the difficulties we have been experiencing over EEC matters partly arise because the House has not had time—or rather the Lord President has not seen fit to allow time—to debate the Select Committee report on procedure for EEC regulations. It is a year since we joined the Common Market, yet we have been unable so far to match our procedures with those of the EEC. My views about the EEC and the merits or otherwise of joining it are well known, but irrespective of any view we may take, it


is the duty of the House to make sure that the necessary machinery is in position and ready. It should have been in position on 1st January 1973. Since we have not debated this Select Committee report and since we have not decided to take action, the machinery will not even be there on 1st January 1974. A year has passed and we have not even tried out some of the recommendations of the Select Committee. That means we shall be in increasing difficulty not only in connection with ministerial speeches but also on statements such as that made today.
Therefore we should not rise for the Christmas Recess until the Lord President has said why he has not found time for the subject. This sort of thing calls into question the efficiency and prestige of this House. It was quite rightly said during our discussion on the retirement of the Clerk of the House that we have one of the best systems of democracy in the world. It is not the system which is at fault but the way in which we use it. Unless the Leader of the House expedites debates on these procedures, history's verdict on him will be that he did not serve the best interests of the House and its democratic processes to which we pay tribute.
The good name of this House is bound up with this. Our procedure must not only be good, it must be seen to be good. The fact that we have not debated this matter, and the consequent difficulties of that, mean that we are not seen to be doing our job. I hope the Lord President will tell us what he intends to do about it.

5.35 p.m.

Mr. John Farr: Some of us feel that we should not rise at all for the recess and there are others, perhaps not in the House, who think that we should rise and never come back.
My views are not as extreme as that. Before the House rises, or if that is not possible, perhaps by coming back a few days early, we should try to fit in a two-day debate on the national energy situation. I appreciate that there was a debate on the fuel control Bill the other day. Also, there was a two-day debate this week. But the House has never done what the nation wants, which is to recognise that a new situation has developed

in the Middle East and that as a nation we are likely to be desperately short of energy for a number of years.
It is of great importance to the nation that hon. Members, many of whom know a great deal about the subject, should have an opportunity of putting their ideas together and deciding what sort of policy we should be pursuing. This is not something we can put off until later on in 1974. It is a desperately urgent matter.
We should have had a two-day debate by now on the sort of priority we attach to North Sea oil exploration. That debate would have given us an opportunity of discussing whether it was feasible to derive oil from shale, as some people suggest, and whether it is possible to produce oil from coal. We should be able to find out whether the Government were considering doing what is already done in the Republic of Ireland on a large scale, which is to use peat for the generation of electricity. In the Republic half their electricity supply comes from turf.
Since the miners began their go-slow a new situation has developed abroad. The threat existed when the miners began their dispute, but since then it has materialised and as far as we can see we shall be pinched for overseas oil for many years, and we must discuss the sort of rôle we envisage for coal as a provider of our national energy requirements in the next five or ten years at least.
I would be prepared to come back at any time, possibly excluding Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but I should not like to come back on the date proposed—15th January—to find that in our absence the limits of phase 3 had been stretched, cracked or broken in the process of securing a settlement with the miners. So, while I should like to see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment do his utmost to secure a peaceful solution to our industrial disputes, I should be most disappointed if this involved stretching in any way the framework of phase 3 and making a special case for the miners which the nation could never afford.
I should like the House to have more time this Session so that there can be clarification by debate or by a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the statement which he issued on Monday. The action which my right hon. Friend


took, whilst less energetic than some of us expected, was a step in the right direction. My right hon. Friend said that he wanted to achieve economies totalling £1,000 million or £1,200 million by cutting back public expenditure. On Monday he said that he was looking to local authorities to achieve that reduction by a 20 per cent. cut in capital spending across the board.
My right hon. Friend, whom we admire so much in his present capacity, may decide that it will be possible to have such a debate before or after Christmas. If the Chancellor gives the House a little more detail on exactly how the cuts will fall on local authorities, I shall press him to give a clear undertaking that the freezing of the much-needed health centre programme shall not continue and shall not be involved in the 20 per cent. cut.
This summer a vigorous programme of new health centre construction, which was so vitally needed in rural areas, was suddenly and without warning frozen by the Government. That was a great disappointment. Many hon. Members accepted that the moratorium must continue until the end of the year. We were given an undertaking that the health centres which should have begun construction this autumn or winter would have priority the following year. I want an undertaking from the right hon. Friend that the 20 per cent. cut which he is asking local authorities to make will not apply to new health centre construction. For those reasons I should like the House to sit a day or two longer.

5.42 p.m.

Sir John Rodgers: I take up one of the matters which has been put before the House in the hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House can take action whilst the House is not sitting. I take up the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers)—namely, the hardship which small firms will suffer under the three-day working week. It is not my intention to debate whether a three-day week is or is not the right thing to do. There is no doubt that many small firms will suffer badly from the imposition of a three-day working week. Some of them will face bankruptcy as a result.
The present situation is that a firm will receive a letter stating that the factory will be allowed to work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday or Thursday, Friday and Saturday. That has happened to a small firm in my constituency. The owner has built up a business from scratch. He employs 35 women. Nearly all of the women are married. They now work from Monday to Friday. He has been told that they must now work on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It is almost impossible for that staff to work on a Saturday because of the demands of their children and husbands.
To compound the felony, the businessman to whom I have referred has been told by the trade union that he will have to pay time and a half on a Saturday even if the women do not work. I plead for more flexibility. I ask that some organisation be set up immediately so that there shall be a court of appeal. A man faced with that situation should be able to put his case before a tribunal. He should be able to ask a tribunal to allow him to operate on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays rather than Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will realise that the present situation cannot wait until 15th January. I hope that he will give an undertaking that he will mention the matter to the relevant Department, whether it is the Department of Trade and Industry or the Department of Employment, so that some machinery can be set up whereby the smaller firms, which will definitely suffer more than the large firms, shall have a court of appeal. There may be good reasons for their having to work on the days which have been chosen, but at present the position has not been explained to the people concerned. They are worried, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to give an assurance that the Government, while the House is in recess, will consider the matter as one of extreme urgency.

5.45 p.m.

Mr. Clinton Davis: I support what the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir J. Rodgers) has said in opposing the motion. I have had numerous representations made to me by my constituents. They have been raising their voices in apprehension about the


three-day working week. It cannot be doubted that the details so far disseminated by the Government have been obscure. I am bound to tell the Leader of the House that there is a widespread feeling in my constituency that the three-day working week is the creature of the obduracy of the Prime Minister. It is thought that it is designed to pillory the miners. As Dorothy Parker once said, he is
trapped like a trap in a trap.".
Many of my constituents have seen me or have written to me about the three-day week. They say that it will create just the sort of consequences, and particularly for the smaller firms and small factory owners, to which the hon. Member for Sevenoaks referred, and which have been postulated by some hon. Members. It is thought by my constituents that in its wake will follow substantial unemployment or at least short-time working for some considerable time to come. It will produce a terrible pressure on the wage packet of the ordinary worker.
I have been asked whether the three-day week has been introduced to maximise inconvenience because of the haphazard and chaotic way in which the zoning has been undertaken. The Government seek to say that the Electricity Council is responsible. However, a number of my hon. Friends saw the Minister concerned. He said that he assumed responsibility for the situation. Whatever the position might be, my constituency and the borough in which it is situated—namely, Hackney—has been zoned for working on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Devon-port (Dame Joan Vickers) referred to working mothers. There are many women who work in my constituency during the week so as to make it possible for their families to live decently. They are now being asked to work on a Saturday, which they will find almost impossible to do.

Mr. John Page: They will be able to have a holiday on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Mr. Davis: In fact, they will be working very much less than at present. Further, there are a large number of Orthodox Jews in my constituency and

throughout the borough, and especially in the constituency of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman). During the winter months they are unable to work beyond three o'clock on Fridays. They will not be able to work on Saturdays. For them there will be a one-and-a-half-day working week. I am told that the Moslem community is concerned about working on a Friday. I made these representations to the appropriate Minister and I received a somewhat brusque message from his Department yesterday—"Sorry, no relaxation". I was not asking for a relaxation but for flexibility and a variation of the hours. The Minister has fudged the issue.
What consideration has been given by the Department to local needs and priorities? So far as I can see, a totally haphazard situation prevails and in this respect the Minister has abdicated power. Adlai Stevenson said that while power corrupts, lack of power corrupts absolutely. The Minister might bear that in mind. By that token this Government are absolutely corrupt.
Local authorities have had totally inadequate guidance about the effect of the cuts, particularly in the health and social services. Boroughs like my own in stress areas suffer most. They are progressive local authorities which accept responsibility for the provision of decent social and welfare services. They spend a great deal of money on essential functions which provide the means whereby the lives of the poor, handicapped and deprived can be made a little more dignified and pleasant. These are the authorities that will be the first to be penalised.
Yesterday in his wind-up speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer was less than frank in dealing with local authorities. When he said:
The rate support grant will be reduced only in line with the savings in expenditure and if, like the rest of the public sector, the local authorities reduce their current expenditure in accordance with the Government's request, that will not lead to one extra penny on the rates."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1470.]
That is a lot of rubbish. What about the vastly increased interest rates that local authorities have had to shoulder over the last few months? What about


the ordinary effect of inflation? What about local government reorganisation that will impose enormous new burdens on local authorities? The choice that the Chancellor presents to local authorities is to cut back on the provision of essential services or to increase the rates. If local authorities increase the rates, the Chancellor says that the electorate will know who is responsible. The bluster and threat expressed by the Chancellor last night are no substitute for a clear direction to which the House is entitled before we adjourn.
Stress areas like mine cannot wait to obtain guidance and directions. Assurances are needed about dilapidated estates that require urgent refurbishing. For example, the GLC in my constituency is dedicated to the provision of £600,000 for the Kingsmead Estate. The work needs to be done, and the local authority needs assurances about it.
How shall we be able to recruit new social workers in the current climate of inordinate difficulties? Already there are tremendous shortages in all the social services departments, yet people are desperately in need of health and social workers. The Government have calculated that responsibility for their own misdeeds can be passed on to local authorities. That is discreditable, cheap and a tremendous injustice, but it is a characteristic of this monumentally stupid Government. I hope that the Leader of the House—although I very much doubt it—will give me some assurances on the critical questions I have raised.

5.55 p.m.

Mr. John Page: The House certainly should not rise until statements have been made on a number of subjects relating to electricity control procedures. I hope that on these urgent matters my right hon. Friend will either answer this afternoon or tell us that one of his right hon. or hon. Friends will answer tomorrow or before Christmas. These are matters which have been mentioned to me by individual constituents in connection with businesses. I also have to declare an interest as a director of a company that is concerned.
I wish to raise three major questions. The first two concern the division of the working week into two groups—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,

Friday, Saturday. Unlike the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis), who struck a carping attitude, I wish to congratulate the Department of Trade and Industry and the Southern Electricity Board office at Reading on the way they have handled the difficult emergency situation. The way in which the staff make decisions on the telephone, followed almost immediately by confirmation, and are neither discourteous nor muddled, is an example of what civil servants in contact with the public can do when they roll up their sleeves. I am glad that the Minister responsible for the Civil Service is present. He may take that as a bouquet for some of his officials who, no doubt, he will be seeing before Christmas.
I have received from the Rayners Lane Chamber of Commerce and the Pinner and Northwood Chamber of Trade in my constituency representations to the effect that they are extremely worried. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of all retail business is done on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Only about one-quarter or one-third of the business of a shop is done in the early part of the week. I was telephoned yesterday by a shopkeeper in a small shopping parade in my constituency who said that if the shopkeepers work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, using electricity all day, the parade will become a dead land. Once a shop or an area loses business, it is difficult to get it back.
I have spoken to Ministers about this and I know that it is under consideration, but a way must be found to make the division of the week fairer. This could be done by allowing some shops to open on six or seven days a week in the mornings and others to open on six or seven days a week in the afternoons. In that way the division of the week would be much more equitable. I ask my right hon. Friend, who is one of our grass roots Cabinet Ministers, to appreciate that this is a genuine worry to shopkeepers.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir J. Rodgers) said, we simply cannot wait until 15th January to learn whether rotation of the three-day working week will be allowed in industry. Most industrial undertakings have an arrangement with their employees that their working days are from Monday to Friday. An undertaking which works on Thursday,


Friday and Saturday is under two major disadvantages. One is that Saturday is a voluntary working day and there might therefore be vast absenteeism on Saturdays.
Secondly, if people go to work on a Saturday they will probably have to be paid time-and-a-half until lunchtime and double time after lunch. This means that, if they are on a three-day week, they will have to be paid for four days. The electricity situation may cause employers to divide the week among various workers and factories, and the electricity boards will make cuts in areas which are not working on a certain day. If the emergency continues for, say, more than two weeks, the Government should change the situation to allow for two weeks' late turn and two weeks' early turn working. I do not think that such an arrangement would be too complicated for the switchgear equipment, but if the arrangement went on for more than two weeks workers on late turn would find themselves in a disadvantageous position.
Thirdly, I wish to refer to a matter which may not be as important as other matters in the present emergency but which I regard as a matter of some urgency. Since the Minister for the Civil Service is present, he may be able to put the situation right immediately by getting on the telephone and starting things moving. The Secretary of State for Employment yesterday spoke about reconciliation. What I am now seeking to do is to stop the anger and disgust that is felt in my constituency against the vindictive and callous attitude of the miners. Unless something is done about the situation, relations within various communities will be jeopardised.
I was telephoned this morning and was told that an order had been sent out to the effect that no Christmas parties should be held this year in the evenings at telephone exchanges and offices. In the South Harrow office the staff have arranged to have a party tomorrow night, with a band and all the rest of it. I checked the position with the electricity board officials, who told me that there was no reason why that sort of activity should not be regarded as recreational. I see nothing unpatriotic about holding a party in an office as against holding a party in an hotel.
I have contacted my right hon. Friend the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications. I understand that the Post Office Board has considered the matter and sees no reason why office parties should not be held but has requested that, if possible, they should take place in daylight hours. In the London area—the same thing may have spread to other areas—this has been taken as a directive that parties should not be held. I hope that a decision has been made on this matter.

Mr. Prior: There is no regulation or rule on this matter. I imagine—I am now speaking off the cuff—that the Post Office is asking all its employees to cooperate in saving electricity, which is only to be expected. I repeat that there is no regulation on this point and that there is nothing to stop those parties going ahead. In view of the hard work carried out by the Post Office staff, they should be allowed to hold their parties, but I hope that they will save as much electricity as possible.

Mr. Page: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I shall pass on his remarks to the telephone manager's department and I am sure it will be helpful. I hope that before 15th January an announcement will be made about any possible change to Summer Time. I know that a decision in this respect might be unpopular in the North, but I believe that in the South of England there is everything to be gained by an extra hour's work in daylight.

6.4 p.m.

Mr. Marcus Lipton: One of the problems mentioned by the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. John Page) would have been solved if I had been given a more satisfactory reply to a Written Question I tabled to the Home Secretary on 29th November asking the Government to introduce Summer Time. That would have saved the hour to which the hon. Gentleman referred. I notice that the hon. Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) has tabled a motion on this subject, and I have no doubt that he will seek to refer to it if he has the opportunity to do so later in the debate.
The House finds itself in some difficulty in respect of the work now taking place in New Palace Yard. The Select


Committee on House of Commons Services—of which I can see only one member present, namely the Leader of the House—finds itself in a difficult situation in terms of its last report. When that report came up for approval, it was rejected by the House. Consequently the surfacing of New Palace Yard is still in abeyance. Does the motion that we are now debating mean that the Select Committee cannot meet before the House resumes in order to come forward with a new and better recommendation than that which the House rejected—in my view rightly—a week or so ago?
There are many unsatisfactory features about the underground car park but I wish to refer to only one. A report submitted to the House a year or so ago stated that a car park would provide space for over 500 cars, at an estimated cost of £1.3 million. The last figure I have been able to elicit from the Government shows that the cost of the car park will be exactly double that figure, and indeed that that will not be the final figure. With all the delays that will occur, overtime and other difficulties which have been encountered, I should not be at all surprised if the eventual cost of this wretched project approached a figure of £3 million. At a time when the public are being asked to make all kinds of sacrifices, when local authorities are being asked to cut expenditure and when Government policy is aimed at saving petrol and dissuading car owners from bringing their cars into central London, we are spending anything up to £3 million for the purpose of attracting more cars into central London at a cost which has not yet been finalised.
I hope that we shall have clarification of the situation from the Leader of the House so that he may set at rest some of the serious doubts felt by the general public about the whole project, which contradicts everything the Government are asking the general public to do. I apologise to the Leader of the House that because of a long-standing engagement I shall be unable to hear his reply, but I have no doubt that he will give this matter serious attention.

6.8 p.m.

Mr. Burnaby Drayson: I am reluctant to agree to Parliament's rising for three weeks for the Christmas Recess without drawing attention to matters

which affect my constituents and which I consider require immediate and urgent attention.
The first matter concerns the position of small garages in rural areas of my constituency in the Yorkshire dales. The garage owners obtain their petrol supplies in relatively small quantities of 1,000 gallons at a time. Although in the past they have been able to charge a slightly higher price for their petrol than that charged in towns and cities, they are not allowed under the present regulations to increase their price above 42½p.
I understand that in buying petrol in the small quantities in which garages of this type purchase it, they have to pay the supplying companies the maximum price, which is just a fraction under 41p. Many of them tell me that on a margin of that kind they will be forced to make a loss and that some of them will have to close their businesses. They perform a very important local service. If farmers and others living in rural areas are forced to go into nearby towns for supplies, they will use much more petrol than is necessary and they will not be saving fuel. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ask the appropriate Department to look into this problem and that it will be found possible to allow these small garages, where it is essential that they should stay in operation, to charge a premium above the price already fixed.
My second point relates to a matter to which I referred at the opening of this Session of Parliament—the position of our small dairy farmers and beef producers. They are having an extremely difficult time because of the increased costs of feeding stuffs. I know that the discussions on the Annual Farm Price Review have been brought forward and that we are likely to know the results sometime in February. In the meantime there is no firm assurance that farmers' incomes will not be cut. They have not even the assurance that in the new year they will have the increase of between 13 and 16 per cent. which has been offered to the miners.
We must not forget that the farming community is one which never contemplates strike action, and certainly farmers cannot work a three-day week, especially those who have to look after herds of dairy cows. Unlike the petrol companies, our milk producers cannot put up their


prices, yet their costs have risen substantially in recent months. I am sure my right hon. Friend will agree that we need all the production that we can get from our land.
The gravity of the situation as it affects the small farmer is very well set out in a letter which I received only yesterday from the wife of a farmer. When I look at her excellent handwriting and at the clarity of her figures, I have the feeling that she must be responsible for the farm accounts, so she is well aware of the problems.
The lady writes:
There is another matter which I feel may not be fully appreciated by those who deal with agricultural matters and which may have considerable impact on future food supplies. This is that many small—5 cwt.—cattle are being sold for slaughter. Farmers would rather take a poor price—£60 to £70—now than pay out money to feed the cattle to the normal weights. On Thursday Gisburn Market "—
which is one of the largest cattle markets in the North of England and is situated in my constituency—
was full of this type of cattle and of dairy cows going for slaughter. The price of grain has risen again which threatens livestock farmers with another increase in feed costs. Is there any other industry which cannot increase the price of its products to cover costs and is regarded as behaving scandalously if it attempts to export?
That is another point on which I hope we shall have an early reply from the Government—the ability of farmers to export cattle, especially culled dairy cows, to the continent of Europe, where the market for this type of cattle is so much better.
There should be a statement to reassure our farmers and to stop the premature slaughter of fat cattle and the reduction in the dairy herd due to forced sales because of the high cost of feeding stuffs.
I refer now to another matter which has been mentioned already. It concerns the possibility of flexibility in operating the three-day week. It applies especially where factories are on night shift. I am told that it will be far easier for them if they can start their working day at perhaps 7 a.m., go through the night and finish at 7 a.m. on Thursdays. The three-day working week should not be from midnight to midnight. There should be flexibility to take account of factories working night shifts or three

shifts per day. When night workers are involved, in many cases firms have to arrange transport to carry them to and from work. If there could be flexibility about the hour at which the three-day week should start, it would be a great help.

6.16 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: I am glad to have an opportunity to say a very few words on the subject of the Christmas Adjournment. I am afraid that I did not have the privilege of listening to the many speeches which have been made already and to the many reasons why the Adjournment should not take place.
I am sure that it will appear monstrous to the general public, bearing in mind the state of affairs that we are in at the moment, that this House should contemplate adjourning for this considerable period. I know that many hon. Members, especially Government supporters, are tired, are exhausted and are looking forward to an opportunity to refresh their spirits. I have no doubt that even some of my hon. Friends are in that position. But at a time like this, with all the problems that the nation faces, surely this House should be in session. By all means let hon. Members get away for Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day, but what about the rest of the time?
We ought to know what is happening. We are told of the terrible crisis that has occurred, yet here we are contemplating going away from this House with hon. Members taking no notice of what is happening. I have no doubt that the Government feel that, with hon. Members away from this place, they can do as they please without being questioned in the House.
I am afraid that I did not have the benefit of hearing what I am sure were the eloquent, important and lucid remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis). I understand, however, that he referred to a problem which exists in my constituency.
In the borough of Hackney there are many businesses carried on by orthodox Jews. During the winter months an orthodox Jew will close his business at 3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon and will not open it on Saturday. So devoid


of understanding are the Government of the effect of what they ordain that they make an order which provides that in Hackney businesses shall be open only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It means in effect that these businesses can be carried on not for three days but for only a day and a half. I am sure the Government must recognise that such a hardship should not exist. I have already made representations on this matter to the Minister and I hope that something will be done, even though we shall be unable to question the Minister about it during the recess.

Mr. Clinton Davis: My hon. and learned Friend is incorrect in what he says about the zoning arrangements. The businesses are required to work Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Mr. Weitzman: The House has heard what my hon. Friend said. No doubt he has accentuated the point I was making.
I urge the Government to consider a point I wish to make about the miners' dispute. The Government have been told that the miners are not paid for their waiting time, which is considerable, before they go down the pit. In the dim and ancient past, when I was a young barrister, I undertook many cases under the Workmen's Compensation Acts. If a miner suffered an accident during his waiting time, he received compensation as the accident was regarded as arising out of and in the course of his employment. No doubt the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), who is a member of the Bar, will acknowledge the correctness of what I am putting forward. If in those circumstances the waiting time was recognised as constituting part of a miner's employment, why on earth is there not a strong case for the Government attempting, within the ambit of phase 3, to increase the amount of money payable to the miners by paying for such waiting time and so provide an opportunity to settle the dispute?
There is a host of other problems which could be put before the House which would show the folly of the Christmas Adjournment. I hope in the circumstances that the Minister will recognise the importance of my remarks.

6.22 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davis: I have never before opposed an Adjournment at Christmas or any other time. We should have a full day tomorrow we should be here next Monday and we should return on 2nd January
My first reason concerns daylight saving. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is antipathetic to the argument because he is an eminent farmer, and the farming community has, understandably, always been against the idea of daylight saving. However, it took me only 10 minutes to collect the names of my colleagues who follow mine on my motion on the subject. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) is in full support of the motion, together with a large number of his colleagues, and I could have got many more hon. Members to add their names to it. They include many who voted to return to the present position. I have always favoured the previous position and I be-live that the clocks should now go forward one hour. That is necessary if we are to get the maximum amount of working time out of the day. Only the farming community would be opposed to this. There would be no opposition in the whole of commerce and industry.
Sports organisations also greatly favour the idea. It would be of great assistance to football. The present power restrictions will mean exceptional difficulty for football and other outdoor sports. Daylight saving would benefit those sports; its immediate introduction would be a boon. It should be introduced before Christmas so as to be of considerable assistance during the holiday period and into the new year. I hope that there will not be a negative statement and that the Government will give an undertaking, through my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, that the matter will be considered at Cabinet level before Christmas and a favourable decision taken.

Mr. Denis Howell: I speak for myself on this occasion. The Government are considering the request of the football authorities to suspend the Sunday observance laws to help sport, particularly football, which is in an impossible position. Sunday observance is a matter for Parliament rather than for the Government, but the suggestion of the hon. Member for Is


of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) would mean that kick-offs could be at 3 o'clock for most games. This would go some way towards mitigating the disastrous financial situation of sports clubs. If suspension of the Sunday observance laws is not acceptable, the Government should consider the daylight saving proposal of putting the clocks forward one hour.

Mr. Rees-Davies: I entirely share the hon. Gentleman's view on that matter and on the Sunday Observance Acts. Emergency legislation would be needed to amend them and one or two other matters. It is no good waiting until the time when one hopes the emergency will be resolved. For that reason the House should return early in the new year.
I share the concern about the flexibility and clarity in the regulations. When they were introduced last Friday I was away in the north of England but I returned on Monday morning to find that bedlam had been let loose. I had inquiries from the horse racing industry, the greyhound racing industry, tractor drivers and a large number of constituents with factories, particularly those engaged in making cement and similar products. It is obvious that the Government had completely overlooked the fact that a large number of people have their own generators and have conserved their own fuel oil. I had meetings in the early part of the week at the Department of Trade and Industry and elsewhere about these grave problems.
Happily my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry made a statement, but it was impossible to put questions to him. He made the statement, which covered many subjects, between 9.30 p.m. and 10 p.m., and as he had influenza he vanished to bed afterwards. Consequently the statement was not clear. However, my right hon. Friend said that generators could be used, with certain arrangements for fuel, except for sporting and recreational purposes. This compounded the confusion. First, the horse racing situation was not clear. Weatherby's has its own generator and had set aside its own fuel. Publication of the paper on which all the events depend is essential to horse racing.
We have had an authoritative statement—although not confirmed in any

way—that horse racing can continue and that Weatherby's will be allowed to use its generator and fuel. It cannot be seriously contended that the Racing Calendar is not for sporting and recreational purposes, so it seems to me to be an exception to the statement, although it is true that a registered newspaper is a commercial newspaper.
I turn now to the astonishing situation affecting greyhound racing. The industry not only has 42 generators, one for each of the tracks, but has sufficient stocks of its own fuel set aside to enable it to use them. The important fact, which has not yet been stated, is that it was directly as a result of the request of the Department of Trade and Industry in 1972 that it should install generators in case there was a fuel emergency that the industry spent nearly £500,000 to do so. It is now paying high interest on over £200,000.
It is an unattractive argument to say that floodlighting should not be used because it might create impressions in people's minds that somebody else was getting something they were not getting. That is not acceptable to the British people. If they were told that any outdoor sport which continued to use flood-lighting was allowed to do so only if it generated its own electricity and already had its own fuel supplies, they would understand that no one suffered.
The Government must give way on this matter and see that an industry which they have asked to behave in a decent manner to ensure that there will be no difficulties about fuel in the future, and which carries out the suggestions which have been made, does not thereby suffer the economic ruin that it will suffer if it has to close altogether in the next few weeks.

Mr. Denis Howell: The position is exactly as the hon. Gentleman has stated it, but it is even more incredible because only two weeks ago, when he announced the first ban on floodlighting, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the Minister for Sport, urged people to use generators. As a result several clubs bought generators. They included Tottenham Hotspur, which spent about £20,000 on a generator and the following week was banned from using it. This incredible situation is causing difficulty. I do not expect the Leader of the House


to be able to give us an answer, but as Ministers have asked sporting bodies to use generators, and as sport is essential to our national life, I cannot see why, if they are not taking electricity from the grid system, those sporting bodies should not be allowed to use their own resources, as they have been urged to do.

Mr. Rees-Davies: I agree, but I am not sure that Tottenham has had time to obtain the necessary fuel reserves. I draw a distinction between the person who has both the generator and the fuel reserves and the person who has only the generator. But some allocation of fuel oil should reasonably be given to people with their own generators.
That point exactly illustrates why the House needs to continue. If we were not sitting, such matters could not be put. Nowadays Governments are rather glad to see the back of the House of Commons rather than receive constructive suggestions from Members.
I have one important point, which I have discussed with a number of people, on the mining situation. We must all try to come up with possible solutions to the miners' strike—

Mr. James Wellbeloved: It is not a strike.

Mr. Rees-Davies: We must try to find a solution with regard to the miners' conduct.
The miners have been entitled to a 40-hour week since, I believe, 1947. They have a five-day week. Everything depends upon the maintenance of the pits during the weekend. A farmer with livestock has a seven-day week. Those in sport who play on their pitches five days a week must have someone to maintain those pitches at the weekend. A factory may work a five-day week, but it must be maintained over the weekend. I find it strange that nobody seems to have thought to negotiate with the miners that they should be prepared to give up the weekend to work, and should enter into a new contract. If they were invited to enter into a contract which included an obligation to work on Saturday or Sunday to maintain the pit, no one would dispute that they worked unsocial hours. That idea should be carefully considered.
The miner has a hard working week of 40 hours in normal times. It may well be right to say that that is enough and that he should not have to do any overtime at the coalface. But no miner will say in all honesty that he does not owe a responsibility to see that the pit which is his livelihood—one might almost speak of the pit in which he lives—and the machinery he uses are kept in an honourable working state.
An hon. Member for a mining constituency said that the miners had not broken the law. I did not intervene, but I thought that there was something wrong. It was that none of us destroys the means of his livelihood. Although the miner may be doing nothing against the law, he is breaking something far more important to him. He is breaking down the very pit in which he earns his livelihood. When he does not take any action, but stays away, executive staff do the job that he should be doing. A matter of honour is involved, the honourable attitude of a working man who will always protect his pit and equipment and will see that he does his best.

Mr. Wellbeloved: Would the hon. Gentleman apply the same criterion to Members of Parliament, that of regular attendance and participation in the work of Parliament, so that we also may have an honourable outlook upon our work? Some hon. Members, far from playing a full part in maintaining their responsibility in the democratic parliamentary system, often absent themselves to obtain yet another living by another occupation.

Mr. Rees-Davies: That is a very cheap crack. I was trying to make a constructive contribution. It is a cheap and dirty crack to suggest that everybody should be a full-time Member of Parliament. It is not the view of my constituents or of the majority in the country that all hon. Members should sit here all day long doing just one job. People believe that the brains and intelligence of all the professions and all industry should be represented. Some of the best contributions from the hon. Gentleman's side of the House this evening have come from those who have outside occupations. I should not have given way if I had realised that we should hear a thoroughly dirty crack of that kind. I had thought, wrongly, that we were on the ball.
It is no criticism of the Chair when I say that I was unable to take part in the debate yesterday and the day before to make the suggestion that I have just made. I was unable to do so because so many hon. Members wanted to speak. We should return here at the beginning of January and have what my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) suggested, a two-day debate upon the energy situation. We should try to get together with a view to finding a way out of the miners' plight.
I have no intention or desire to suggest that there should be any whittling down of phase 3, but I believe that one day it will be necessary that when a miner signs an agreement, as he should do, setting out his working conditions, his working week—whether it be of 35 hours or of 40 hours—should incorporate a duty and responsibility to go in as and when required for purposes of maintenance.
To compensate a miner for that, he must be given a substantial increase in his emoluments, because he is thereby being asked to do as a permanent part of the terms of his employment something which it is reasonable to ask him to do only in return for a substantial reward. Along those lines an answer might be found.
Much the same is true in the case of the power workers, whom I regard as some of the best workers in the country. I have more sympathy for the power workers than for any other group of workers. In case of accident and emergency they have to be called out in the middle of the night. This is an unsocial aspect of their job and it should entitle them to something extra.
Next, what is to be done about ASLEF? This is the one union that everybody is against. Let the members stand up and be counted. We do not know who they are; we do not know their names and addresses. When we had an electricity strike in Kent, we found out who the people were and in a very short time the community persuaded them to return.
If the identity of these people were known, they would be unpopular. I believe that the men and their wives would recognise this, and in the national interest the men would return to work in the knowledge that they would achieve

their purpose in due course. It is up to the national to act—to "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you."

6.42 p.m.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I oppose the idea that we should adjourn for a recess of this length because of the remarks the Chancellor made in the course of his speech last night. His remarks about local government expenditure were alarming and showed that the Government still do not appreciate the chaotic problems which have been caused bw local government reorganisation. We appreciate that Ministers have much to occupy their minds at present, but these are problems that will affect the everyday lives of people, and the problems are getting worse day by day.
Appointments have been made at chief officer and principal officer level at salaries far higher than existing ones. In some cases these appointments have been made for the same or less work. Questions to the Pay Board bring no response. The Pay Board has not sufficient staff to cope with the matter, though it is concerned about it.
What is happening in local government reorganisation is not a good example when restraint is called for from others, particularly the manual workers. These appointments are being made constantly. The Government should be seized of the problem. The numbers of staff lost to existing authorities are growing day by day. The ring fence system among local authorities means that there is internal cannibalisation and the best of people in existing authorities are often lured away by higher salaries. The three-week delay which will result from the proposed Christmas Recess will make the situation much worse.
The reorganisation is leading to duplication of staff and of resources. I shall not weary the House with examples of departments which, although whole areas of responsibility have been shared, are only a few short of the complement they previously had. It looks as though there will be a great deal of waste and extravagance which we can ill afford.
Time is running out on another matter about which the Government have been pressed, namely, the way in which the cost of the new authorities is to be met. My own county of Avon is concerned in this,


as are Humberside and Tyneside. In these areas entirely new authorities are having to be established from scratch, yet we still do not know what measure of support is to be given by the Government to help with the acquisition of new buildings, new administrative machinery and new equipment. These serious problems are causing a great deal of concern in my area and in other areas similarly affected.
Local government reorganisation will be with us for some time. Things are happening which the Government should provide time for thinking about. In a month or two's time it will be too late. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think again about the length of the recess and perhaps bring us back early, if necessary. Let us get to grips with these problems, because they will affect the lives of ordinary people just as much as they will be affected by other and more national issues which are taking place at this time. I am sure that other authorities, like my own, would overwhelmingly support the idea of the Government giving more time and thought to these matters.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Ivor Stan brook: I, too, have reservations about the wisdom of our rising tomorrow and not returning until 15th January for reasons some of which have already been advanced. One other reason is the problem of the status of engineers and their right to practise in Europe after the end of this month.
This is a problem which almost by definition is urgent, because the situation in which we are at present placed—I say "we", although I am not an engineer, either chartered or of any other kind—is that British engineers who are chartered at this moment may as from the beginning of the new year be entitled to practise in Europe. But the others—they are the majority—will not be so entitled unless a formula is devised to enable us to put forward the type of standard, qualifications and equivalents to the Community which will admit engineers other than those who are at present deemed to be chartered engineers.
No doubt the House is aware that my hon. Friend the Minister of Aerospace and Shipping has been in negotiation with the various institutions and bodies concerned—the Council of Engineering

Institutions and some other engineering institutions outside the council which are very closely concerned with the problem.
Today my hon. Friend told me:
I have agreed with the Council of Engineering Institutions that mutual recognition within the EEC should be sought for all adequately qualified engineers whether they are in membership of the institutions inside or outside the CEI. For this purpose it has been agreed with the CEI that there shall be an extended register of engineers having these qualifications… My officials are continuing urgent discussions with the interested parties to this end.
That is all very well, but I believe that no further meeting is proposed of those officials with members of the institutions concerned before the end of the year.
We know that the negotiations with the EEC about the status of engineers will commence in the early days of the new year. It therefore seems to follow that the many perfectly well qualified engineers who are outside the Council of Engineering Institutions may lose their right to practise in Europe almost immediately the new year begins. This is a situation which I am sure the House does not desire. Therefore, it should surely be dealt with before long. The recess will not assist us in settling this problem.
I illustrate the problem by reference to one such institution which is not within the Council of Engineering Institutions and whose members, therefore, are not considered to be chartered engineers. I refer to the Institution of Heating and Ventilating Engineers. It has 6,429 members, 4.100 of whom are not eligible to be considered as chartered engineers and will not therefore be eligible to practise in Europe after the end of the year. It is one of the institutions outside the council. The council consists of 15 engineering institutions and at the moment they alone have the right to admit their members to the status of chartered engineer.
It would follow that the solution to the problem could be the admission of suitable institutions like the IHVE into the council on the same terms as those which are already admitted. But that is not the policy. The policy is to raise standards, as I understand it, and there is a sort of drawbridge which is being raised against engineers belonging to institutions outside the council. That is the way in which the dilemma


arises for members of all such institutions—80 of them, comprising many institutions throughout engineering and many thousands of British engineers who are well qualified by any reasonable standard to be considered on the same level as chartered engineers.
What has been proposed so far by the council as the solution to the problem is that all those members of non-CEI institutions who already have chartered engineering status or a degree should be admitted. But the difficulty comes over the others, in the case of the Institution of Heating and Ventilating Engineers numbering over 4,000. It is suggested by the council that there should be a mature candidate's route. It proposes that those members of the institutions concerned who are over the age of 40 who have been more than 15 years in a responsible engineering job and can write a satisfactory thesis of 5,000 words up to degree standard should be eligible.
One does not need to examine such a proposition deeply to realise that it is an almost impossible requirement for any man over the age of 40, holding a responsible position, to attain a qualification of academic degree standard when he is already engaged full time in a job and has had great experience in his own industry without that basic academic degree qualification.
I ask my right hon. Friend to emphasise the urgency of the matter, because the solution surely is that adopted for the admission into the Council of Engineering Institutions of the Institute of Fuel, whose members were taken in as a whole by a screening procedure under which each one was able to register his experience and qualifications, a process which allowed membership of his own institution to be represented along with the representatives of the CEI itself, vetting each one for suitability and, if necessary, requiring, viva voce, some other form of test. Imposing a formula of the kind proposed seems to be another device for putting off the problem indefinitely and causing great injustice to many thousands of British engineers.
For that reason, I believe that it is wrong to adjourn unless this problem is considered in the urgent spirit which it demands.

6.55 p.m.

Mr. James Wellbeloved: I join the debate briefly to urge the Leader of the House to reconsider the dates he has proposed for the Christmas Adjournment. My first reason is the measures which the Government have taken to deal with the economic situation and the fact that those measures were taken without prior and proper consultation with industry, with the trade unions and, indeed, with this House. A huge number of difficulties have arisen and like most, if not all, hon. Members I have been inundated with telephone calls from worried employers and employees in my constituency who are concerned about the effect of the Government's regulations upon their livelihoods.
Already the regulations laid by the Government have been amended. Industry is bewildered at the flood of instructions and counter-instructions being issued. It is also concerned that, when it wishes to contact the Department of Trade and Industry, it finds it almost impossible to get a telephone line through to that Department. I have been informed that the Department itself is experiencing difficulty in contacting its own regional offices. If that is the situation, it is intolerable that the Government should be sending hon. Members away in the middle of this chaos. We ought to be able to be here to see Ministers across the Table of the House and put to them the very issues which are worrying our constituents.

Mr. Pavitt: Not at Christmas.

Mr. Wellbeloved: My hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) says "Not at Christmas", but I believe the situation in terms of employment and in terms of the economy of the country to be so grave that I should not be opposed to coming here on Christmas Day itself if I thought that that would be of assistance to my constituents who are suffering such misery. I shall not bore the House with repetition of the many points which constituents have put to me. I choose merely one of the simplest brought to my attention only this morning concerning the hairdressing trade. Although hairdressing is not an essential industry, it has a place in society in the morale of our womenfolk who will carry the bulk of the burdens which are being


placed upon us. In my constituency hairdressers are being told that they may operate only on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. But those are not the days upon which they normally do the bulk of their business. It is done towards the end of the week when hon. Members, like the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and others of her sex, wish to prepare themselves for whatever morale-building activities they will engage in in the latter part of the week. That is only a simple illustration of the chaotic situation that exists.
I hope that the Leader of the House will be able to say a word or two about the effect of the Government's regulations on the retail trade, and in particular the hairdressing trade.
One of the reasons that stung me into contributing to the debate was the speech by the hon. Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies). I take grave exception to hon. Members coming to this House and sermonising to people who earn their living in a hard and arduous way in digging the coal from the bowels of the earth, men who are doing no more than confining themselves to a normal working week. It does not lie within the mouth of any hon. Member who is not playing a full-time part in the work of Parliament in any way to cast strictures or to sermonise those who face the sort of work that those in the mining industry face.
The other point I wish to challenge from the hon. Member's speech was his reference to announcing to the general public the names of those who are working a normal working week and banning overtime. I assume that the hon. Member hopes that the public might be so unwise as to terrorise them back to work. If we are to talk in terms of disclosing to the public all our interests, let us begin here and not go along with mealy-mouthed recommendations for other people which we have not the decency or courtesy to put in operation in respect of our own activities in Parliament.
One of the scandals, and therefore one of the reasons why we should not adjourn for the recess at this stage, is that the whole question of the declaration of Members' outside interests has not yet been dealt with by Parliament. It is a

scandal that we do not have full declarations of all our interests. If we were to have such declarations, the public would be able the more adequately to judge our ability and our part in the democratic processes. Perhaps also it would deter some hon. Members from coming along with a lot of sanctimonious humbug about other people.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. James Prior: One of the most fascinating aspects of debates of this kind is that some of the many hon. Members who say why we should not go into recess, giving copious reasons, disappear before the end of the debate or were not present at the beginning.
We have debated a number of matters of considerable importance to our constituents, and one recognises at once that we do so at a time of national crisis But I remind the House that we are resuming one weék earlier than usual, and, if the situation is such that the Government think it desirable to recall the House earlier, I have no doubt that the necessary arrangements will be made through Mr. Speaker.
If there are hon. Members who have problems about their constituents which they feel should be raised during the Christmas period, I shall be in my office on Thursday and Friday of next week. I shall welcome any hon. Member who telephones and makes an appointment if he comes to see me, and I shall see that the views of his constituents are put to my right hon. Friends. Ministers will be on duty next week and the week after that and the week after that to make certain that as many as possible of the problems are ironed out.
The task set for us by the problems of the energy and fuel crisis are enormous administratively—indeed, of a size the country has probably never had before. Of course there will be difficulties and very considerable problems. We all wish that they could fade away, and of course they could fade away if the miners and the railway workers went back to full work. Then, although we should still have the problem of oil shortage, we could manage it and deal with it. The problem over the price of oil is again one which we could deal with. But coal supplies 70 per cent. of our electricity demand, and at the moment the stocks


at the power stations are running down at about 1 million tons a week while they are getting about 40 per cent. less than their normal expectation at this time of year.
There are those who say that it would be all right if the Government were reasonable. To them I point out that already nearly 3 million people have accepted agreements under phase 3. Are the Opposition suggesting that those 3 million people would be content to see the miners now breaking through phase 3? I do not believe they would. I think that it would grossly unfair to them, and only the other day a trade union leader said,
We have accepted a phase 3 agreement, but of course if phase 3 is broken we shall be back tomorrow for more.
That would result in inflation becoming rampant once more, as it did after the Wilberforce agreement last time, which resulted in the introducton of the statutory policy. The present policy will do more to improve the position of the miners relative to other people than perhaps any other form of incomes policy yet devised.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) mentioned the unsocial hours provision. I assure him that in the offer made to the miners full advantage was taken of that provision. But I have noted what he said and I will see that his views are given immediately to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, together with any other views which may contribute towards a settlement of the dispute.
Settlement of the dispute is paramount in the interests of Britain and of all Members and their constituents who are worried about the effect of the three-day working week. Several hon. Members have raised specific points about the three-day working week. I will deal first with the general point that some firms are having to work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and some Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and the inconvenience that this causes to those who have to work late on Friday afternoon or on Saturday—which is a particular problem to certain of the orthodox Jewish community and also affects those employing large numbers of women who do not want to

work on Saturday because of their children. These are all very great difficulties with which the Government and the electricity boards have had to contend.
Some hon. Members have asked whether these three consecutive days could be rotated. It is necessary at present to specify the days on which electricity can be used in order to ensure that, if load cuts become necessary, industry and commerce can have three consecutive days with uninterrupted supply of electricity. This is what industry asked us to do. It wanted three consecutive days with uninterrupted supply rather than what happened on previous occasions, when there have been full weeks working but interruptions of supply during the course of each day. On the other hand, the three days do have the disadvantages I have mentioned. We shall certainly keep under review the whole situation and consider whether, if circumstances allow, it will be possible to rotate the days on which the use of electricity is permitted.

Mr. Drayson: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that, by starting at 7 a.m. on Monday and going on to 7 a.m. on Thursday, with overnight working, one is using electricity not at a peak time?

Mr. Prior: I cannot deal with that problem off the cuff, but I will have it examined, and if my hon. Friend gets in touch with me I will see what I can do about it.
I turn now to the situation of the shops. I am happy to say that their position is rather better than some of my hon. Friends have feared, Food shops will be able to use electricity at any time and will be exempted from the provision of the order. Others shops will now be permitted to use electricity for part of every day, Monday to Friday, and all day on Saturday. In general terms, it means that they could use electricity during certain permitted hours either in the morning or the afternoon, Monday to Friday. However, if rota cuts have to be imposed they will fall in either the Monday to Wednesday or Thursday to Saturday periods, possibly during hours when shops are open. It is understood that many shops prefer that arrangement though it probably would not suit other users, such as industry. Shops which


normally open on Sunday will be permitted to use electricity during certain hours. I think that is a help.
We are trying to be flexible, but we must save electricity. We have to save over 20 per cent. of normal demand each day. Over half of that has to come from domestic use and just under half from industry and business. We cannot do this without causing a great deal of inconvenience and problems. But the problems that this will create, however severe in the short run, are nothing compared with the problems that this country will cause itself in the long run if it does not get a sensible incomes policy and control over inflation.

Mr. Spearing: The right hon. Gentleman will know that there are a large number of factories in Acton. He said that he wishes to save 20 per cent. of industrial and commercial use of electricity. Will he explain why he has not asked every unit of production to economise by 20 per cent., or more, and show that it has done so, rather than adopt the three-day solution which will have considerable industrial and social secondary effects and, from what I have heard in my constituency, will cause a reduction in production which would not otherwise take place?

Mr, Prior: It will certainly cause a reduction in output and production, and that we bitterly regret.

Mr. Spearing: Additional.

Mr. Prior: No one regrets that more than the Government. The suggestion put forward by the hon. Gentleman could not be monitored and we would not get the saving. That is why we must take this action.
I must put the hon. Gentleman right on one matter. We are going for a reduction in industrial use of 10 per cent., not 20 per cent. That will affect some firms more than others, because many industries must keep going—food processing and manufacture, and so on—and there are many other essential users whom we cannot touch at all. Where continuous processing is going on, the reduction will be 65 per cent. of normal requirements. In other cases, it is three days out of five days normal working.

Mr. Clinton Davis: The right hon. Gentleman is one of the nicest Members

in this House. Therefore, I cannot accept that he believes in the claptrap that he is talking. What consultations took place to define the zoning areas? Were consultations undertaken with chambers of commerce in areas such as mine to determine whether there was a substantial orthodox Jewish or Muslim community that would be affected? What was done to define these issues?

Mr. Prior: The electricity boards have been assessing the situation since the last coal crisis. They thought that this was the best arrangement in the interests of the largest number of people. Of course, no system is perfect. This system is bound to mean an element of rough justice. Many people will be inconvenienced and will have to change their habits. We shall have to accept that situation during the emergency. It is no use people thinking that they can go on as usual. It is not "business as usual". Much as I regret it, the country will have to recognise that that is the situation.

Mr. Clinton Davis: And maximise the inconvenience.

Mr. Prior: My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet asked about the decision that was taken on Summer Time. The Government have given most careful consideration to the balance of advantage and disadvantage in carrying out this change. The Electricity Council was marginally against making the change because it would increase the demand for electricity at the start of the day and add to the problems of power stations at that time in the morning. I think that, on the whole, industry had mixed feelings. It did not come down firmly one way or the other, but I think it was probably just in favour. I refer to industry south of the Midlands. Certainly north of that area no one wants the change to be made. Other industries, including agriculture, by no means considered it to be a major factor and did not want the change to be made. The construction industry certainly did not want the change to be made.
The Government had to decide whether the inconvenience and the problems associated with making the change would make a worthwhile improvement in electricity saving. We came to the conclusion, after giving the matter a great


deal of thought, that the saving in electricity was so marginal as not to justify making the change.
My hon. Friend also drew attention to the effect on football clubs. Being a keen football spectator, I ought perhaps to have taken that aspect more into consideration than I did. The fact is that we reached the conclusion that we should not make the change. The change is due to be made on 17th March, and I think that it is right to stick to that date.
I turn now to the points raised by the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt). I realise that the fuel shortage poses special problems for the disabled. Garage owners have been asked to give priority to the disabled and other special categories. I understand that garages have been responsive to their needs. If individual disabled people are experiencing particular difficulties, I know that the DTI's emergency fuel office will make special efforts to resolve them. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman can contact me on Thursday or Friday of next week if there is further difficulty.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the meals-on-wheels service. If the cooking is done on commercial premises it qualifies as catering and is not affected by the three-day working rule and will be allowed electricity at any time. If the cooking is done on domestic premises, equally there is no limitation. I hope that the meals-on-wheels service will go ahead. The emergency provides an opportunity to large numbers of people to carry out voluntary work. I am sure that over the Christmas period and the time of the emergency people will carry out that voluntary work for which this country is properly renowned.
The hon. Member for Acton raised what I still think is a very complicated matter. Motion No. 88, in the name of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, West (Mr. Judd) and other hon. Members deals with the system of generalised preferences in the EEC. As the hon. Member for Acton will know, this scheme is in existence. It will bring substantial benefit to developing countries in 1974. Detailed implementation of it may, from time to time, require United Kingdom statutory instruments on EEC secondary legislation. The former can be dealt with

in the usual way. A fully satisfactory way of dealing with the latter must await the consideration of the Foster Committee, as it has become known—the Select Committee on Secondary Legislation.
I hope very much that we can debate that matter very soon after our return. The hon. Gentleman will know—if he does not, I should like to tell him—that we were to have debated the matter this week, but because of the changing round of business to accommodate the two-day debate on energy and economic affairs, we put off the debate. We shall not debate it on the first week that we are back, but I give the hon. Gentleman an undertaking that unless something dramatic happens we shall be debating it on the second week that we are back. I hope that the House will be able to move to fairly quick decisions after that.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of tariffs on food items. No tariffs on food items have yet been imposed and there have been no increases under the common external tariff as a result of EEC entry. A change in the beef and veal duties is due at the beginning of the next beef marketing year, which starts probably on 1st April. So what my hon. Friends the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry have said is consistent. I have checked to see that it is consistent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) asked about the health centre programme. He has asked me about that previously during a debate on a similar motion. I am afraid that the cuts in public expenditure will apply right across the board, with very few exceptions. Much as we regret this, and although I shall ask my right hon. Friend to look again into my hon. Friend's particular problems in his constituency, these cuts will have to be indiscrimately applied right across the board, otherwise we shall not make the necessary reduction in Government expenditure.

Mr. Pavitt: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that whereas the £69 million cut in the hospital programme will be put back eventually, a health centre requires the co-operation of general practitioners and if not started will be very often gone for all time in this situation? Therefore, in


making the adjustments in the £111 million in relation to the National Health Service, will the right hon. Gentleman advise the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services to pay special attention to the points made by his hon. Friend the Member for Harborough?

Mr. Prior: I certainly shall. I know that it will be the wish of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that any cuts which have to be made as the result of this are put back as and when possible. What we are thinking of is much more a rolling forward of the programme rather than a direct cut.

Mr. Marks: Where there is a 20 per cent. cut, for instance, in educational building and there are exceptions, such as special schools—which exception has already been announced—does that mean that the cuts in the rest of school building for primary and secondary schools will be more than 20 per cent. to compensate for that?

Mr. Prior: Mr. Prior No, it means that my right hon. Friend is having to make a 20 per cent. cut, and if certain things are excluded other things may well be held back by more than 20 per cent. So that 20 per cent. is an overall cut.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) raised the matter of the SELNEC Passenger Transport Authority. I have noted what he said and that he is not entirely satisfied with the Answer that he received this afternoon, which was that provided such a total policy could be contained within acceptable estimates the Government would endorse it. What that means is that if, presumably, Manchester thinks that it is worth while spending the money on this scheme as opposed to other schemes, in time it will be able to do so. It will be up to Manchester to decide how to spend its money when transport investment is being considered, as it were, under the transport grant scheme that the Local Government Bill will introduce. I know the worry that exists in the Manchester area about this matter, but I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Redmond) had to say.

My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) was very worried about the position of the small dairy

farmer and small beef producer, and about the premature sale of cattle. The livestock farmers are at present going through a difficult period. They are having to meet vast increases in the price of feedingstuffs, and the price of beef and of milk has not risen to compensate them for that. As my right hon. Friend has said, he will bring forward the date of the Price Review in order to help out as soon as he possibly can.

But I hope that my hon. Friend will convey this to his farming constituents. I believe that it would be the greatest folly if they did not hold on to their stock now. I am certain that the prospects for them are exceedingly good and that the prospects for farming are probably better now than they have been for a generation. Britain will need all the food that it can produce over the next 20 years or more. I hope that no farmer will be so foolish as to sell off breeding or other stock now which could be kept to provide more animals later.

My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) asked about the extended register of engineers for recognition in the EEC. I thought that the Written Answer that he received today went quite a long way towards the point that he had been pressing for some while. My hon. Friend then moved on to such a narrow point that I shall have to have that examined and get in touch with him about it.

The hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) asked about the car park. The surface of New Palace Yard will now have to be reconsidered by the Services Committee. The hon. Gentleman said that it had been thrown out by the House. It was, but not by a very large majority or by a great many Members.

What always interests me is the number of times that I have been told that we must not have a debate on such an important matter as the car park late at night, because it is something which commands the great interest of hon. Members. But if one looks at the Division record one sees exactly how many hon. Members were prepared to attend the debate. I must declare an interest in that I was not present on that night, either.

Mr. John Page: I may have missed the point when my right hon. Friend was speaking, but will he say when the new


arrangements about rotation for retail shops will be announced and whether they are to be effective from next Monday?

Mr. Prior: I suppose that I have announced quite a bit this afternoon, but my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry will be making the order tonight. It will operate from 1st January. I shall have to seek further advice about what happens next week. I do not think that next week is a particularly serious problem, because the shops will not be wanting to open for all that amount of time next week. They have been more concerned with the period from 1st January onwards. My hon. Friend is hoping to make the order this evening, and he will give as full an explanation of the order as possible. If I may turn to one or two House of Commons points to end—

Mr. Michael Cocks: The last time I spoke on a motion for the Adjournment the right hon. Gentleman overlooked my question. I should be most grateful if he would reply this time.

Mr. Prior: Yes, I am sorry. The hon. Member for Bristol. South (Mr. Michael Cocks) spoke about local government reorganisation. I think we are finding that local government reorganisation is resulting in some local authorities greatly expanding the size of their bureaucracy. The Government take a pretty poor view of it, but that is as nothing to the view which my constituents take. I urge local authorities and local councillors to exercise the maximum amount of restraint in their new establishments. I know that my right hon. Friend is extremely worried about some of the establishments that he has heard about. The same remarks apply to some of the salaries granted for new jobs in local government, and, there again, I hope that local councillors will exercise responsibility at this time.
If the emergency situation persisted, we should have to ask the House to reconsider its sitting hours in order to economise in the use of electricity. I should wish to do this only after full consultation and a debate which would follow the laying of a motion. I would make a tentative suggestion that this would mean sitting in the mornings and rising in the early evenings. Naturally, we hope that the difficulties facing us all will be resolved by the time we return,

but I thought that the House would like to have an early indication of the method which we are likely to recommend.
I should now like to say a brief word about Members' allowances. I have received representations during recent months from several quarters and have been pressed in the House to review the level of the various allowances which Members are able to claim. I undertook to give serious consideration to those representations, and that I have done in consultation with my colleagues. As the House knows, I am not unsympathetic in these matters and I fully appreciate that the cost to Members of spending a night away from home and, to an even greater degree, of secretarial expenses has increased sharply since the Boyle review. There is never a good time to consider these matters and the present is, unfortunately, singularly inappropriate. I am very sorry about this, but I must tell the House that we have decided it would not be right to raise the level of any allowances at the present time, nor indeed during this Parliament.
A number of suggestions have been put to me about salaries and there are others in a motion on the Order Paper. All of these lead me to the conclusion that the present system of payment and employment of secretaries needs reconsideration. I would suggest that the Boyle Committee be asked to look at this whole matter as part of its review in the next Parliament. I am afraid that that is not the sort of news I relish giving to the House just before Christmas, but I think it will be generally accepted as inevitable.
Perhaps I may mention another matter—supplementary petrol rations. Should it be necessary to introduce petrol rationing, arrangements will be made for Members to apply to the Fees Office for a supplementary petrol allowance for the purpose of carrying out their parliamentary duties. I will arrange for Members to have details of how to apply if this becomes necessary. Limits would have to be imposed, although what they would be I cannot say at this moment because they would depend on the basic allowance that was granted. In any case, I hope that hon. Members will use every opportunity to travel by train and so on whenever that is possible. Having said


that, and having come to the point of departure—

Dame Joan Vickers: I asked my right hon. Friend a question about the dockyard, of which I gave him notice. There is to be a defence cut of £290 million. Is the dockyard to be allowed to go on working, or not? I asked that question the other day without getting an answer. I should also like an answer to my question about the coffins.

Mr. Prior: I apologise to my hon. Friend. It is a tremendous job to answer every question. The home dockyards will have to work a three-day week using electricity and two days without using electricity. The periods will have to be chosen in consultation with the local electricity board and may require working on Saturdays. I think my hon. Friend knows that. She will also know there are to be cuts in defence expenditure. I will talk to my right hon. Friend to see whether he can give further information as to how these cuts will fall on my hon. Friend's dockyard. I cannot say more on that point at the moment.
My hon. Friend also asked me about the supply of coffins. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anything that we have done because of the fuel shortage should affect the supply of coffins. Coffins are mostly supplied by very small firms who, up to this point at any rate, will not have been affected by cuts in electricity. Both this week and last week they have been allowed to work a normal week, so they should not yet have been affected. If problems arise I will have them looked into, and perhaps my hon. Friend will get in touch with me after the Christmas holiday is over. When I say that, I mean after Boxing Day is over.
That might be a suitable moment for me to end. It is usual at this time of the year for us to wish a happy Christmas to all the staff who serve the House so well. So I wish them a happy Christmas—I have already wished Members of Parliament a happy Christmas—and I wish us all a brighter New Year.

7.36 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: I sought to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, after the right hon. Gentleman had spoken only because he was kind enough to mention to me earlier that he

would refer to new matters affecting the House of Commons, which he did in the last few minutes of his speech. I shall detain the House for only a few minutes, because there is no point in my ranging over the whole debate or the speech of the right hon. Gentleman.
Hon. Members are going away for Christmas under the most melancholy conditions that I can remember during my 25 years in the House of Commons, and there is naturally great anxiety and worry about many matters which will be raised by constituents in the coming weeks. Therefore, they have wanted reassurance and comfort on matters about which they feel uneasy. However, there are just one or two points which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned to which it would be appropriate for me to refer.
The Leader of the House has given us a hint of the possibility that the House may be asked to reconsider its hours of business. He was justified in doing that, though I am sure the whole House hopes that the conditions and circumstances which may give rise to any such proposals will be ended before the House returns on 15th January. We are looking forward to some movement towards conciliation and settlement of these industrial disputes. We are certainly not contemplating that the House and the country will have weeks and months of emergency, of deepening crisis, because of industrial difficulties which confront the nation at the present time. Nevertheless, the Leader of the House was justified in making that tentative reference to the possibility of changing the hours of business of the House.
The only caveat I would enter is that there should be no curtailment of the rights and privileges of the House. We are not asking for a reduction in either our hours of work or the amount of work we do. We must help to save electricity if conditions remain the same when we return. It is a little disturbing for the right hon. Gentleman to have his attention distracted by one of his hon. Friends at this moment. I was saying that we on this side could not agree to shortening the hours of Parliament at a time when the whole nation might be seeking redress for difficulties and grievances and wanting new measures to be taken to meet the difficulties which confront it. We must


seek to save electricity, but we must preserve the full functioning of the House of Commons with its customary rights and privileges of debate. People may want the House of Commons to be working more rather than less during the difficulties of the next few weeks. The Leader of the House has promised consultation and a motion in due course, but there can be no three-day week for the House of Commons and this should be made very clear. After all, we are the Parliament of the Realm and we have an overriding public duty and responsibility to safeguard the democratic rights of the people and to be here to deal with problems and difficulties which may arise.
The Leader of the House referred to Members' allowances. This is a difficult matter. We are always diffident about discussing matters which relate to conditions and allowances for Members of Parliament. However, on behalf of the Parliamentary Labour Party I put to the right hon. Gentleman certain suggestions for the adjustment of Member's allowances which under the Boyle Report had their analogues in the structure of allowances payable to the Civil Service. I give one simple example. Members of Parliament who have a home and constituency outside London and who have accommodation in London during the Session are given a subsistence allowance which is related to a payment made in the Civil Service. That was clearly established in the Boyle Report. As from 1st January 1973 the Civil Service received an improvement of the London subsistence allowance from £5·25 to £5·75. We asked the Leader of the House to consent to a corresponding adjustment for the parallel allowance payable to Members of Parliament. I give that as one illustration. There is another relating to the provincial rate of subsistence.
Another problem which I raised with the right hon. Gentleman was the payment of London allowances and the area covered by them, which his predecessors said could be adjusted if they were then found to be inequitable. They have since been found to be inequitable and adjustment could clearly have been made. I am disappointed at what the right hon. Gentleman said, but we all understand

that we cannot be furthering our interests at a time of grave national anxiety. I am bound to qualify that, however, to this extent. The country does not expect Members of Parliament in present conditions to worsen the basis of their efficiency and the performance of their duties. I do not believe that any member of the public would expect Members of Parliament to be placed at an acute disadvantage in relation to other servants of the State.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the allowance payable for secretaries. This is in an entirely different category. The Boyle Committee never thought that the allowance of £1,000 a year would be enough to pay for a full-time secretary. That was never contemplated. Now, of course, the allowance is even more inadequate, in view of current levls of remuneration, than when the Boyle Committee reported. Members of Parliament have not yet had the benefit of any of the stages of the counter-inflation policy. Nothing has happened to give them any additional resources out of which to pay for their secretaries under stage 1, 2 or 3. There is an early-day motion on the Order Paper which expresses the view of many hon. Members in that regard.
Not long ago the Government made sympathetic comments about the employment of secretaries. That was some time ago when we were debating the new Parliament building, construction of which is now to be deferred. Hon. Members are finding it increasingly difficult to retain the essential equipment for the performance of their duties in dealing with correspondence. They are unable to pay secretaries what is now regarded as reasonable remuneration for duties in the House which involve long hours, split duties and all sorts of uncertainties about their engagements and conditions of service.
The Leader of the House has reported the Government's judgment in this matter. The House has noted it. I must reserve the position of my right hon. and hon. Friends because I am not in a position to acquiesce in what the right hon. Gentleman just announced. I hope it will not be thought that I am intruding into a debate on grave matters with domestic issues of relative unimportance


to the country, or that I am getting our debate out of perspective. This is the only opportunity I have of raising the matter, and had I spoken before the Leader of the House I should have been unable to comment on the matter.
For the rest, quite clearly we are rising in sombre circumstances. Whether public opinion and the pressure of events will bring us back earlier it is impossible to say. The Leader of the House may rest assured that the House would willingly come back at any date the Government thought right and proper to attend to our business before 15th January. We have quite rightly cut our recess short this year. We have the good news that the Leader of the House will be on duty in person, because many of us will be working in our constituencies and elsewhere and we shall be able to get in touch with him if we are in serious difficulty.
I believe that we face considerable disruption, chaos and confusion in the weeks ahead as a result of the new restrictions on the use of electricity. I sincerely hope that the social and industrial fabric will take the strain, but it will be a severe one. We therefore enter the new year facing a somewhat unpredictable future, but we sincerely hope that good sense will prevail and that the judgment of the Government and all those concerned with this grave situation will lead to a satisfactory settlement of the disputes which plague the economy and cause so much public inconvenience. I sincerely hope, too, that we shall return after the recess a much happier House of Commons than we leave it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House at its rising to-morrow do adjourn till Tuesday 15th January 1974.

RATE SUPPORT GRANT

7.49 p.m.

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I beg to move,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) (No. 1) Order 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): It will be convenient for the House to discuss at the same time the following motion,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) (No. 2) Order 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.

Mr. Page: The Local Government Act 1966, under which the orders are made, requires the orders to be accompanied by explanatory reports by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. The reports are House of Commons Papers Nos. 47 and 48. They were duly laid before the House at the same time as the orders were laid. The orders and the reports deal with the two financial years 1972–73 and 1973–74. Under the Local Government Act 1966 the main grant settlement was made every two years, but the procedure was amended for 1973–74 by the Local Government Act 1972, and only that year was covered. The new arrangement is the precursor of the grant settlement which we are proposing in the Local Government Bill which is now before the House.
To deal with these orders is perhaps a little confusing. I shall try to put on record as succinotly as possible exactly what we are dealing with in each order and how it comes about. In 1970 we debated the Rate Support Grant Order 1970, which fixed the amount of grant for 1971–72 and 1972–73. The year 1971–72 was wound up by the Rate Support Grant (Increase) Order 1972 which we debated last year. So this year in the (Increase) (No. 1) Order we are dealing only with the year 1972–73. Last year we debated at the same time the Rate Support Grant Order 1972, which fixed the amount of grant for 1973–74 only. We are now dealing with the increases necessary for that year in the (Increase) (No. 2) Order.
I had hoped—and I know that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath


(Mr. Denis Howell) knew of my hopes—that it would be possible to publish before now a White Paper giving the details of the rate support grant settlement for 1974–75. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we had a White Paper printed. It has been delayed as a result of the expenditure reductions announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Monday.
The debate, unlike last year's debate, is only on the increase orders. We are not debating at the same time the main Rate Support Grant Order for 1974–75. We shall conclude the main settlement as soon as possible after further discussions with the local authorities. In fact, those discussions started this week.

Mr. Denis Howell: Whilst that may be true, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the orders before the House, having regard to what the Government might do in terms of expenditure, have a consequential effect on expenditure in future years, and particularly next year's expenditure? Will he confirm that they cannot be discussed in isolation because, as the local authority associations are telling us, there is a considerable carryover into next year?

Mr. Page: No, the hon. Gentleman is not quite right. The orders deal with the period up to March 1974. The No. 2 order deals with the increase in costs for the period up to the end of March 1974. Therefore, we are not dealing with 1974–75. It may be that when we come to November or December 1974 we shall be obliged to look again at the settlement for 1973–74—namely, that which we are discussing now. Perhaps a further increase order may then be necessary. Alternatively, we may be able to take a considerable amount of the increase which we would be making next November into the main settlement of this year.
I think that the hon. Gentleman has in mind whether we can take more into account as we are starting off with new local authorities with a new main support grant order, despite the fact that we have been delayed a little. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we have that well in mind. I cannot make any promises. It is a matter which must be considered

and discussed with the local authority associations.
The orders before the House take account of increases in prices, costs and remuneration since last year. That is as far as they go. Each year the main grant settlement is based on expenditure reflecting the levels of prices, costs and remuneration which are current when the main order is made. To prevent the value of the grants being eroded by subsequent unforeseen rises in the level of prices, costs and remuneration, my right hon. and learned Friend is empowered by the Act to increase the grant if it appears to him that the effect of the rises in prices, costs and remuneration on relevant expenditure by local authorities is substantial.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: How does what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, which in normal circumstances would be welcome, square with what his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, as reported in HANSARD, on Monday when he talked about a reduction in the amount of grant previously envisaged for 1974–75? The right hon. Gentleman talked about an increase while the Chancellor told us that there will be a reduction.

Mr. Page: If the hon. Gentleman will refer me to the column I shall endeavour to read it and to see exactly what was said. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is quoting my right hon. Friend correctly, with respect. Perhaps he will quote the words in HANSARD.

Mr. Kaufman: On Monday the Chancellor said:
These decisions on public expenditure will entail a reduction in the total of the current expenditure which was accepted by the local authorities in England and Wales in the recent rate support grant discussions, and a reduction in the amount of grant previously envisaged for 1974–75."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 964.]

Mr. Page: Of course, but the hon. Gentleman is entirely on the wrong track. We are dealing with the increase in costs, of pay and the costs of materials during 1972–73 and 1973–74. My right hon. Friend has called upon local authorities to make a reduction in their expenditure. That follows the settlement which had already been made. I call it a settlement because we had the statutory meeting between the local authorities and the


Ministers. That had already been made on previous figures. Local authorities are now asked to reduce capital expenditure by 20 per cent. and procurement by 10 per cent. That includes goods and services and excludes pay and debt charges. That is for future expenditure in 1974–75. We are dealing with anticipated expenditure as increased during 1973–74.
If the hon. Gentleman wishes to develop that matter, and if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall try to answer him in more detail towards the end of the debate if I, too, catch your eye. I cannot see that that matter is relevant to the increase orders dealing with the position only up to March 1974. The only options to the Secretary of State in making an increase order are either to make the increase order and to take into account all the changes in prices, costs and remuneration which have come about at the time when the order is made, or to decline to make an order. As the 1966 Act has been interpreted, those are the only options he has.
In 1968, the then Government took the option of not making an increase order. Apart from that, in each year an increase order has been made. There is no flexibility about this. The order has to be made taking into account all the cost increases, or no order has to be made. If the House accepts the provisions of the Local Government Bill now before it the Secretary of State will have a little more freedom in this respect.
I deal now with the No. 1 order. This is the third increase relating to the year 1972–73, the grant for which was originally settled in 1970, increased in 1971 and 1972 and is now being increased for 1972–73 for that period remaining after November 1972 of the year 1972–73. The main arrangements for 1972–73 are covered by the 1966 Act provisions, that is to say, the original settlement was made three years before the end of the year to which it relates. We have a third increase order for that year to take account of the pay and price movements in the five months November 1972 to March 1973 when that financial year ended.
The No. 1 order and the explanatory papers show that there was a net increase in costs between November 1972 and

March 1973 on the relevant services of £12·9 million. The rounded figure is £12 million. The figures are clearly set out in the explanatory papers and in the order. In the No. 1 order the effect of the increases for that year is to add £6 million to the rate support grant for the year 1972–73, all of which is allocated to the needs element. With an increase of this sort one applies the formulae for the resources element and the needs element. In some cases it will come out as a division between the resources element and the needs element. In other cases it will be found that the resources element is sufficient even with the increase in relevant expenditure. In this case the formula applied the whole of the increase to the needs element.
The No. 2 order covers 1973–74 taking into account the net increased costs between November 1972 and November 1973. I need not go into the figures as the details are clearly set out in the explanatory papers, which show that the total net increase in costs of pay and material prices amount to £396·7 million. The final result of the No. 2 order is that, allowing for all the figures set out in the explanatory paper No. 48, the rate support grant is increased by £223 million. The order allocates the increase in the rate support grant between the needs and resources elements, and it allocates £30 million to the resources element and the remaining £193 million to the needs element.
Many of the detailed estimates on which these figures are based have been supplied by the local authority associations or the Greater London Council. Other estimates are provided by the Government Departments concerned and discussed with the local authority associations. Figures have been agreed with the local authority associations for these orders.
Almost invariably when an increase order is made some increase falls on the wrong side of the line. In this case it is regrettable, perhaps, that it has not been possible to take into account the increase awarded to the firemen and the increase which is under discussion for the manual workers. These matters have not yet been cleared by the Pay Board so they do not come within the definition in the 1966 Act of figures which have definitely been decided. The effects of


these can be taken into account in next year's increase order, or we shall consider whether it is possible to take them into account in the main settlement order for 1974–75. I do not think that I need to go into the figures in detail. If any hon. or right hon. Gentlemen have queries on the figures and I am able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and have the leave of the House to reply to the debate, I will endeavour to deal with the figures.
On behalf of my right hon. and learned Friend and myself I express our great gratitude to all those in the local authority associations and the Greater London Council who have co-operated in working out these figures. As usual with an increase order, the figures are agreed. Once one has accepted the estimates, the increase order is automatic. It is of great importance to the local authorities that we should take into account the increases that have occurred since the first estimates were made. That is what the orders do, and I commend them to the House.

8.7 p.m.

Mr. Denis Howell: I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the orders and for his appreciation of the part that the local authorities have played in co-operating with the Government. That is important, in view of what I shall have to say about the lamentable performance on other matters affecting local authorities, which contrasts with the courtesy and understanding always shown to local authorities by the Minister for Local Government and Development, who seems to have lost control of his colleagues in Government in their dealings with local government.
The Government's policy for local government lies in absolute ruins. Even before the events of the last two weeks there was utter confusion throughout the land about local government reorganisation. There have been created great new metropolitan areas, great new county areas, great new district councils, regional water authorities, new health executive councils and area boards. All that has been going on for the last two years and it is extremely expensive, as we warned it would be time and again in debating the Local Government Bill now

before the House and the Local Government Bill of last year.
What have these new local authorities been doing? They have been appointing new officers at salaries the like of which have not previously been seen in local government. Top jobs have been filled at very high salaries and, now, these senior officers of the new metropolitan councils are busy recruiting new staff to fill the new departments. This is an inescapable consequence of the system. In any case it was bound to be an expensive burden for ratepayers.
That was the situation that existed even before the economic crisis, and the Opposition warned time and again about the costs. This is why we have opposed this form of local government reorganisation. But to all this confusion there will now be added the chaos of the Government's present economic policies. In considering cut-backs in essential services, it is inexcusable that the high costs of local government administration should be duplicated at the expense of the services provided, for this is the consequence of the Government's present action. It might still be cheaper to scrap local government reorganisation, even though it has already gone a long way. In the present crisis I believe that a feasibility study should be undertaken to examine the costs and the merits of local government reorganisation. The process has probably gone too far to reverse entirely at this stage, but I suggest that the situation should be re-examined.
Whatever the case about local government reorganisation and however far that has gone, I am certain that the Government should at once scrap their proposals for reorganisation of water undertakings and also the health service. The present emergency demands that, in the national interest, expensive duplication of administration should end forthwith. There can be no doubt that in the two services which I have mentioned, reorganisation has not yet gone too far. Some chairmen and top officials have been appointed, but their jobs can be put "on ice" for a time and this will save many millions of pounds.
There is growing evidence of concern among Ministers on this topic. We heard the Leader of the House a little earlier express concern about the duplication of staffing in local government


reorganisation and the very high salaries paid to some of the new appointees. As an old local government man, I bitterly resent the outrageous threats which are now being levelled by successive Government Ministers against local government. The hysterical note that has come into Ministers' voices is to be deprecated. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment has made a recent speech on the subject, and there have been comments by other Ministers, particularly by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who was in an aggressive mood when addressing a recent conference of municipal treasurers.
Perhaps I may first quote the words of the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment:
It will be too soon to judge with certainty whether local government reorganisation will be more or less prodigal in its use of manpower, but some of the signs are disturbing. In many parts of the country we are getting reports that the new authorities, formed by amalgamations of four or five previous districts, are budgeting for a level of staff 10, 20 or even 30 per cent. higher than the combined total staffs employed by their predecessors.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury in his remarks made what most of us regard as a considerable threat to local authorities, but that threat pales into insignificance when we examine the words of his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House last night. The right hon. Gentleman said:
If any local authority deliberately sets out to flaunt the national interest, if it deliberately sets out to pursue a policy counter to the request that we have made and the rates go up in consequence, the necessary steps will no doubt be taken to remind electors where responsibility lies. I would add this: such deliberate action could well call in question the continuance of the present system of local autonomy over current expenditure which also carries with it the duty to act responsibly." [OFFICIAL REPORT 19th December, 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1470.]
In my 18 years in the House I have taken part in many debates on local government matters, but this is the first time that I have heard any Minister in any political party suggest, on behalf of the Government, that local authorities are deliberately setting out, or might be setting out, to act against the national interest.

Mr. James Allason: Clay Cross?

Mr. Howell: I do not want to take Clay Cross in particular, because I am dealing with local authorities as a whole. There may be one or two local authorities which do things of which some of us disapprove. I am talking about the majority of local authorities, and it was about the majority that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was speaking.
The House will know that there are no more responsible people in this country than the thousands of men and women who give a great deal of their time freely and voluntarily in local government to serve the country and their fellow citizens. Therefore, it is outrageous that those local government officials should be addressed in such terms by the Chancellor. It is monstrous that he should suggest that the whole freedom of local government spending programmes relating to capital or income might be called into jeopardy, and it will be bitterly resented in local government. Of course there are these duplications. Of course there are these expensive posts being created. Did not the Government think that this would happen, especially after so many of us had warned them month in and month out that it was bound to happen? Indeed, the Government wanted it to happen to a degree, though possibly not to the extent that it has happened.
It was the Government who created a two-tier system of local government which was bound to cause duplication. That is why we objected to it. What does the right hon. Gentleman think that the two-tier system is about? In a two-tier system with county councils and district councils, with metropolitan county councils and metropolitan district councils, the two kinds of councils have to speak to each other. It is not a case of one treasurer and one finance department. There are two. The metropolitan treasurer has to talk to the district treasurer. The metropolitan planning department has to talk to the district planning department. The county education people talk to the district councils about education matters. The same applies all round and goes through the whole of local government services. Everywhere two sets of officials have to be talking to each other, whereas if we had had the unitary system which the Opposition supported, a single official would be doing each job. The Government have created this duplication


of machinery, and they have done it at a very high cost to the ratepayer, as he is bound to discover.
The speech yesterday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was one of the most offensive, unjustified and repugnant speeches ever to be made by any Minister on the subject of local government. I hope that the Minister for Local Government and Development will have the courage to dissociate himself from it.
I come to another aspect of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer was discussing. Not only was his speech repugnant but he was actively engaged in deceiving the House of Commons about the extent to which rates were bound to go up. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) had said that there were bound to be whopping increases for ratepayers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said:
I must tell the House that there is not one shred of truth in those assertions, and I will explain why. The rate support grant will be reduced only in line with the savings in expenditure and if, like the rest of the public sector, the local authorities reduce their current expenditure in accordance with the Government's request, that will not lead to one extra penny on the rates."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1470.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): Order. Inadvertently, I am sure, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has accused the Chancellor of the Exchequer of deliberately misleading the House. That is rather improper. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will reconsider that statement.

Mr. Howell: You put me in a very difficult position, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am always anxious to do what you ask. However, the previous day the Secretary of State for the Environment told the House that rates were bound to go up 7p. The Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot both be right. I had assumed that the Secretary of State was right the previous day—incidentally, I do not believe that his 7p is accurate since in my view it is likely to be nearer 10p, but that is another matter—and that in that event the Chancellor of the Exchequer must have been wrong. If the Chancellor was saying this inadvertently—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It is one thing to be mistaken. It is quite another deliberately to mislead the House.

Mr. Howell: I hesitate to accuse the Chancellor of the Exchequer of deliberately misleading the House, but if he were accidentaly misleading the House by saying that there was to be no increase on the rates when the day before the Secretary of State for the Environment had said that they would go up by 7p, the right hon. Gentleman is even a bigger fool than I thought. Either he is a knave or he is a fool. If you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, rule authoritatively that he is not a knave, I must accept that he is a fool. He must be one or the other.

Mr. Allason: Is not there a slight difference between an increase in rates between one year and another and an increase in rates due to certain circumstances such as a cut in the rate support grant and a reduction in expenditure?

Mr. Howell: I do not think that there is, but to the extent that there is any validity in that point, I shall try to show that we cannot have the cuts which the Government are imposing on local government without considerable consequences upon the rates. I am trying to discover what Government policy is. Since I suspect that Ministers do not know, there is not much chance of the rest of us finding out.
I come to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said on Monday, 17th December, when making his original statement. He said that we were to have these mammoth cuts in local government expenditure and that it would be done without any unemployment of staffs in local government. I shall not burden the House with the quotation. I am sure that hon. Members will take it from me.
We are told that the astronomical sum of at least £180 million is to be cut off the agreed expenditure of local authorities next year. The right hon. Gentleman probably will put figures to the percentages that he gave us—20 per cent. off capital and 10 per cent. off most revenue items. According to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, these astronomical cuts will be made without any unemployment and without putting up the rates one penny. That is Government policy. Those


are the three authentic statements. It is a nonsense. It is unattainable.
By far the biggest portion of local authority expenditure cannot be cut because it is statutory. It means that we are discussing £180 million of cuts which cannot come out of the employment or payment of teachers if we are not to have unemployment and which cannot come out of the police service which is statutory. It means that the local government services to which these astronomical cuts can be applied are very limited in extent.
If we are to have no unemployment, what will happen is that, for example, the various baths departments round the country will sack no baths attendants, the attendants will continue to turn up at the baths, but there will be no money to heat the water in which members of the public might wish to swim. That is the sort of absurd situation in which local authorities will now find themselves. The area of choice available to the local authorities is extremely limited.

Mr. Graham Page: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not resent a full debate on local government finance, but I am a little worried as to how far I may go in answer to the hon. Gentleman. I came prepared to put before the House simple orders increasing the rate of support grants settled some years ago by reason of increased expenditure in the past—increases in costs and such like. The hon. Gentleman is going into the future, about cuts in local government expenditure, and how they are to be brought about. If the debate is to be developed in that way I am only too happy to answer, but it will take a considerable time to answer a full local government debate.

Mr. Howell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is an unusual year. In any normal year the right hon. Gentleman might be right, but this year the rate support increase order is providing the expenditure to establish new local authorities which will begin to operate next year. So this year, for the one and only time in the history of the House, the expenditure in the order has direct relevance to expenditure which local authorities should or should not undertake next year. It was because I

had that point in mind that I interrupted the right hon. Gentleman at the start of his speech to get the point clear, although he did not agree with me.

Mr. Page: Further to my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I submit that the increase orders now before the House take the matter up only to the end of March 1974. The orders are relevant to the years 1972–73 and 1973–74. That is all that is before the House at present.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has to be allowed a certain latitude in this matter, in the exceptional circumstances in which we find ourselves, but the right hon. Gentleman will be entitled to reply to him on the points he has raised.

Mr. Howell: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I now turn to what will be carried over, and directly relate it to the order. The local authorities contend that £164 million ought to have been added to the rate support grant orders, which must be carried over to next year's expenditure by ratepayers. This arises because the relevant expenditure increase for the year 1972–73 was £12 million and for the year 1973–74 it is £397 million. The local authorities say that grant offered by the Department of 58 per cent. of all local government expenditure for the year 1972–73 leaves a shortfall of £7 million, while on a grant rate of 60 per cent. for the following year there is a shortfall of £238 million. Therefore, the local authorities deduce that the ratepayers will have to find the difference between these two sums. It is a rather technical matter, but I am sure that the House will take note of what I have been informed by one of the local authority associations. That association puts the total shortfall at £164 million which must be carried over till next year.
To the extent that we fail to provide for the local authorities this year there is bound to be an increase in rates. I am told that a 1p rate produces around £60 million for the country as a whole. That being the case, the local authority associations are telling me—and I advise the House—that a 3p increase in rates


is bound to be carried over to next year due to the shortfall in the expectation of the rate support grant order.

Mr. Graham Page: Can the hon. Gentleman inform me from which local authority association that information comes? I have told the House—and I would have to withdraw, if what the hon. Gentleman says is correct—that the figures in the orders were agreed by the local authority associations. I am surprised that a local authority association has advised the hon. Gentleman to the contrary.

Mr. Howell: With the customary courtesy practised between us I shall hand over the document to which I have referred. The right hon. Gentleman will see that it is from the Association of Municipal Corporations. He might care to get his officials to look at the document during the debate.

Mr. Allason: As the hon. Gentleman is aware, there is a precept this year to act as a starter for the new district authorities for next year. What is the global figure which presumably should be set against the figure which the hon. Gentleman has quoted?

Mr. Howell: I do not know, but I think that it was on the basis of a 1p rate. No doubt the Minister can tell us.
I return to the question of staffing. A monolithic Department of the Environment has been established. Has the Minister found it possible to achieve the sort of economies of staffing and so on which are obviously desirable in local authorities? Three Ministries—the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works—were brought together in the Department. If, as I and most people suspect, it has not been possible to make substantial savings there—the signs are the other way round, and I do not necessarily complain about that—it is obvious that local authorities setting up a duplicated system of local government will not achieve the results which the Department has not been able to achieve.
We are in an unprecedented situation, which will have a tremendous effect upon local authority services, as my right hon. Friends said in the debate over the past

few days. The country should be under no illusions about the situation. The Government are advising local authorities to make slashing reductions in many nonstatutory services. There will be enormous cut-backs in all our local authorities in adult education, training centres, social service departments, and the home help service, which is essential in helping the sick and the needy. The Government are advising local authorities to cut back also on day centres, miscellaneous community care services and meals on wheels. All of that is work to help the handicapped in our society. The benefits under measures put on the statute book by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris), placing a statutory obligation upon local authorities to help handicapped and elderly people living alone, and to provide telephones and aids of different kinds, are to be drastically cut back because of the Government's economic measures.
It is worth putting on record what the Government have told the local authority associations. They have said:
The Government accepts that to achieve these reductions would involve refraining from recruiting staff to make good wastage or to fill additional posts, depressing standards of maintenance and repair and increasing charges where possible. It also accepts that this could mean less frequent collections of refuse, reducing the hours of opening recreational facilities, increased delays in dealing with planning and environmental health matters, and some longer-term diseconomies.
There can be no doubt that what the Government intend as a result of their local government cuts is a substantial lowering of the standard of life and the quality of services for almost every citizen. It is not just for the ordinary citizen, who might be expected to take care of himself, but for the old, the needy, the sick and the handicapped. They, too, will have to bear the full brunt of the cuts.
That is one of the charges we make against the Government. There has been no attempt to get their priorities right, no attempt to have any priorities. There has been no selectivity about what the Government propose.
The deficiencies of the order are to be added to future orders. The Secretary of State for the Environment has now told us that he expects a minimum of 7 per cent. to be added to the rate bill next year, even though there will be a cut-back


in so much of the service. My calculation, based on the best advice I can obtain, is that the Government have no hope of keeping the increase in rates down to 7 per cent. unless they are prepared to be much more active about the provision of finance in future rate support grant increase orders. This is because of the increased charges that local authorities are already facing and the higher wages and salaries, even under phase 3, that they will have to pay.
Next year, ratepayers will at one and the same time face a monumental decrease in the quality of local government services and a monumental increase in the rates they will have to pay for the deteriorated services. Those are the stark facts which local authorities and rate-payers have to face in the coming months.
I hope and believe that local authorities will try responsibly to help the Government in the national emergency. We on this side say that they should try, and we believe that they will. This is why I ask the Government to give a lead by cutting back where they can on new organisations which have not yet been set up.
Local authorities should make economies where they can, but they have a prime duty to look after the quality of life for the ordinary people. That cannot be cut back without disastrous results. We have said many times that that is what matters more than anything else to the ordinary people. It is often taken for granted, but essentially the services provided by local government are of that high degree of importance.
If at the end of the day it is found impossible to achieve all the contradictory aims and instructions of various Ministers, particularly of the Chancellor, we shall expect Ministers at the Department of the Environment to tell their Cabinet colleagues that they are asking for the moon, that it is impossible to have the cut-backs, to face the increased charges and to do all that without raising rates by 1p, which is what the Chancellor demanded. Those contradictions in Government policy must be resolved before the House debates the White Paper on local government finance which has been promised to us for so long.
I make no complaint about the Minister not having produced the White

Paper although he promised it. Obviously with the country in a serious economic situation it would have made nonsense to have produced a White Paper until the up-to-date information was available for the House and for local authorities.
I hope that the Government understand the impossible position in which local authority treasurers find themselves. By now most treasurers in any normal year have done their sums, they have been able to do their estimating and have been able to advise their finance committees what the rate should be for the coming year. This year they cannot even start on that task for at least another month or two.
The choice which local authority officers throughout the country will have to make between various priorities and their attempt to conform with Government policy, such as it is, will make life almost impossible for them. To the confusion of local government reorganisation the Government have added the chaos of their situation on the economic front. The people who will have to bear that chaos are those working the machinery of local government and those whom it serves.

8.44 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Jones (Northants, South): I want to take this occasion to recall the contributions made by our late friend and colleague Martin Maddan to our debates on rate support grant orders. He specialised for many years in local government finance. He became an authority on the subject. We always looked forward to the contributions he made on occasions such as this. He brought to our deliberations extensive knowledge and the positive approach which he had to many subjects which came to his notice as a Member of this House. I am sure that I speak for Members on both sides of the House in paying recognition to the great service he gave to the House
I always look forward to these debates on rate support grant orders. I sometimes wonder why I do, but I always find something intensively interesting in the comments made on either side of the Chamber on these occasions, and I look back to the debates we had in the previous year and the year before that. It is interesting to see how the tale unfolds. On previous occasions my right hon.


Friend has apologised for the fact that it was the third time he had to have an amending order to a rate support grant proposition. He is getting conditioned to having to do that, but we have not had an apology this year.
I am reminded that in 1968 the then Socialist Government were facing a serious economic situation but declined to make an increase order, and that meant that the local authorities had to bear the increased costs themselves. I make no comparison between the circumstances then and those in which we are today, but the fact I have just recalled shows between the one Government and the other a slight difference of approach.
I very much welcomed my right hon. Friend's reference to the White Paper. He referred to it in Committee on the Local Government Bill. I understand why it has had to be delayed. I know that it will form the basis of useful discussion on a subsequent occasion.
The rising degree of local government expenditure expressed as a proportion of total public expenditure has been of increasing concern to both sides of the House in recent years. That proportion has risen well beyond that of the Government. We have had for some time to consider ways and means by which local government expenditure can be contained. Although I would not express it in such harsh terms as did the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell), I think that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, in that remark yesterday, was unfair to local government as a whole. The remark was not made in the context of the real problem of the extent of local government responsibility and of the degree to which local government expenditure is tied to Government decisions.
As the debate has continued this evening I have looked at the various services represented in the orders we are discussing. There is a series of substantial expenditures outside the responsibility of the Department to which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government belongs. One wonders to what extent Government decisions are coordinated when demands are made on local government and when extensions and improvement of local government services are sought. Looking at the prob-

lem in that context, I for one am conscious that local government is at a very grave disadvantage when so many of its decisions are taken by Government Departments, each, understandably, concerned with the extension and improvement of the standards of the services for which it is responsible. One is bound in that context to think of the overall effect on local government expenditure.
There is no doubt that, following the Redcliffe-Maud proposals in the early 1960's, local government in the main has introduced a greater degree of managerial capacity in the co-ordination of departments than there used to be. What it has done is to break down the departmentalism that we used to have extensively in local government and brought it together under a management group of chief officers representing the whole spectrum of services under local government control. In this way we have introduced managerial disciplines. One questions the extent to which this is possible in the central Government, with their tremendous number of Departments.
I much welcomed the centralisation of three earlier Ministries and their joining together within the Department of the Environment. We have seen substantial economies resulting in expenditure for which the Department is responsible in the new circumstances. But when one considers the pressures from other Departments—for example health and education—and the continuing demands for extension of services, although supported sometimes by large grants but generally under the rate support grant arrangements which provide 60 per cent. of the expenditure, one realises that tremendous sums of money are still to be found in the remaining 40 per cent.
In referring to central Government the criticism I direct is in no way a party point, but under successive administrations we have seen expectations created for local government services beyond the capacity of the country to foot the bill. This is the basis of a substantial degree of the problem in present discontents about public expenditure activities, whether by central or by local Government. Although we have the rate support grant of 60 per cent., it is a compounding of local government expenditure when the demands of central Departments are


added to the proper expectations and aims of the locally-elected representatives in local government. To a great extent, the matter is open-ended in relation to local government finance.
Speaking of the capital accounts yesterday my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:
As for capital expenditure, the Government have effective control through the machinery of loan sanctions, and this will be adjusted so as to achieve the required reductions in expenditure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1469.]
If I thought that it were possible for the Ministers in all of these Departments to take the decisions on loan sanctions, I could see a way of controlling the issue of loan sanctions. I am speaking only from my own limited knowledge. But I feel that so many loan sanctions are passed by the Department itself and do not come from a political decision at all that when it has the proper departmental wish to extend its services, with the decision on loan sanctions coming back to it for adjudication and not to the departmental Ministers, we see that the question is open-ended. This also applies to the extension of services on current expenditure.
I hope that we shall have my right hon. Friend's assurance that the necessary political decisions in containing expenditures will be taken and that it will be found possible to make them effective. If decisions are left to departmental adjudication it will not be possible to contain the capital expenditure, which is so clearly necessary. I do not see this as just a requirement of the emergency situation with which we are faced. I have continually advocated that there should be a containment of local government expenditure.
I know that one is at once asked which services one would contain or curtail. It is a fair question, and one would need to look at each case on its merits. Last year, when I suggested that the library services should be carefully looked at, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) made some inappropriate interjection. But there are many ways in which the expectations which we have had are unrealisable in the short, medium and long term, and we must give these matters the political attention they require.
It is in that context that I support the increase orders, but I hope that, when we have the promised White Paper, we shall see the Government's determination to bring a proper measure of decision taking into local government services and ensure that their expansion and their extension shall be seen to be properly within the compass of the ability of the country to foot the bill.

8.57 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: I went a good deal of the way with the hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones), but I fear that I cannot join him in his final remarks. I differ profoundly with him on that matter.
Those of us who have known the devotion of the Minister for Local Government and Development to local government have very great sympathy with him in the predicament in which he has been placed by the Cabinet. We know that Ministers in spending Departments like to protect their own Departments. Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman's Department is carrying one of the most serious and severe burdens of the present economic crisis. We know that it is not his doing, but at the same time I join my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) in condemning utterly the approach of the Chancellor of the Exchequer towards local government and what it means to people who live in our great cities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) and I represent some of the most stricken areas in one of the greatest cities of the country, and in the orders and in what is to come there is naught for the comfort of the city of Manchester and naught, I fear, for the comfort of the other great cities of the country.
Six months ago we had a parliamentary by-election in Manchester. The Home Secretary paid us a brief visit. He visited part of the constituency of Manchester, Exchange and condemned what he saw. He expressed horror at the human jungles which he briefly surveyed. He was then appointed by the Prime Minister to deal with deprived urban areas, and I fear that the rate support


grants which are being provided by the Government, let alone the prospect which the Chancellor has given us in two deplorable speeches this week, will do nothing to help the Home Secretary in assisting the areas such as my hon. Friend the Member for Gorton and I represent. Already the only discernible effect of the Home Secretary's appointment has been his veto of a much-needed youth centre in my constituency.
I fear that, with the Chancellor's announcement, unless the greatest struggle is made by local authorities, the present Government will preside—I do not use these words lightly—over the murder of our great cities.
The new local authorities which will take office next spring, for which provision is made in one of the orders, have been given a totally impossible task by the Government. They are attempting to set up, with whatever criticisms we may make of the way they are doing it, machinery for the regeneration of our great cities. Instead, however, the cuts announced by the Government this week may mean the downfall of organised life in those cities.
So much is needed to keep the life of our cities going in a satisfactory way; so much is needed to put right what is seriously wrong with the life of our great cities; and so much money, organisation and work are needed to remedy the dereliction in constituencies such as mine. So much work and organisation are needed to ensure that new developments going on in our great cities are not only constructive but operate in human terms. So much organisation and money are needed to improve the environment of those areas of our great cities which are not being torn down and rebuilt. This is one of the most urgent problems of all in my constituency.
I have told the House on a number of occasions in debates such as this that my constituency contains some of the most deprived areas in this country. The degree of poverty in parts of my constituency can be measured by the census returns that hon. Members have received for their constituencies this week by taking three simple levels of affluence in an area. The national average of motor car ownership is 51 per cent. In my constituency it is

25 per cent.—less than half the national average. In the country as a whole, only 17 per cent. of homes—houses, flats and so on—do not have exclusive use of all the basic amenities: hot water, bath, and inside water closet. In my constituency 41 per cent. of households do not have these basic amenities.
That is a measure of the poverty in my constituency that the money provided by the Government through the rate support grant should do something to pm right. In the country as a whole, only 11 per cent. of homes do not have an inside water closet. In my constituency, 27 per cent. of homes are in this unfortunate situation.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman is going a little wide of the order.

Mr. Kaufman: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was attempting to illustrate vividly the predicament in which my constituency is placed. Obviously, I apologise for having gone out of order. I trust that I shall now return within the rules of order, as I had intended to do all along.
On the finance which is available to it, Manchester City Council is obviously anxious to remedy the poverty which exists in constituencies such as mine. It does it by a huge building programme, though for financial reasons that programme will be cut back very severely next year. After having had an unrivalled building programme in proportion to its size, Manchester is now having to pull back very severely. It is heartrending that this should be so. But even the new estates which are to be completed, including the vast Longsight development in my constituency, will require amenities when completed. It is for the rates to provide those amenities and for the Government to provide their share of that revenue.
We are already falling behind. The youth centre in that new development, which has been forbidden, is one example. But it is not just the new estates, the estates which will turn into the concrete jungles which the Home Secretary so deplored when he came to Manchester, which require money to be spent on them under the provisions of these orders and in succeeding years. The older estates, which are falling into decrepitude, need regeneration.
Only this week I received a letter from the Secretary of the Union Street Tenants' Association in my constituency. A lady there asked for a better outlook. She said:
We have no playing fields, no proper shops. Soon the wash-house is closing down, so we will have nowhere to do our washing.
These are very elementary things for people to require. Finance is required to provide them. I deeply regret that the prospect ahead does not promise that that kind of finance will be made available.
My hon. Friend the Member for Small Heath, in giving the totally depressing and demoralising list of services which are to be hacked about as a result of the Chancellor's statement, mentioned services for the disabled. We have a particularly proud record in Manchester of help for the disabled. It is probably the best record of any great city in Britain. When the disabled ask me for something to be done, I have higher hopes in approaching our splendid director of social services than I have in approaching any other department of the city council. Whether it is ramps for wheelchairs, special amenities in the home, special taps for arthritics, and so on, or a telephone provided under the Act introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris), all these things are very likely at present to be provided by the magnificent service of Manchester City Council.
I have a great foreboding that as a result of the Chancellor's announcement this kind of service, which is transforming the lives of so many disabled in Manchester, will fall into rack and ruin. It deeply depresses me to think that that may be so.
From where is the money to come for these services? How are even existing programmes to be maintained? Following the Chancellor's announcement on Monday I contacted the chairman of Manchester City's finance committee, Alderman Norman Morris. He described the outcome of what the Chancellor had told the House as "chaos and standstill." He said
Practically everything that I can see is going to come to a standstill. Agreed contracts may have to be put off.
Regardless of what the Chancellor may have said on Monday, the chairman of

Manchester's finance committee very bitterly and regretfully told me that he did not see how unemployment would not result from what the Chancellor had said.
The cuts in public expenditure which the Chancellor announced on Monday, and which he made sound painless, are indeed painless for the rich and the well-off. For the ordinary people, however, and particularly for the poor whose whole life and environment depend so much upon the services provided for them by their local authorities, life will not merely be made difficult; in many cases is will be made almost impossible. What is most regrettable is that the Government are the cause of this situation, but the councils will be blamed for it. The councils have no responsibility for these cuts, they have not been consulted about them in any way whatever, but they will get the blame because they are not providing the services which the people of the cities wish to have.
Yet none of this was necessary. My hon. Friend the Member for Small Heath told us that the cost of the cuts will be £182 million. But £300 million was given away by the Chancellor of the Exchequer earlier this year to people whose incomes were such that they did not require a tax concession. This sum could have been saved nearly twice over by taking back that money. I regard what the Government have done as a monstrous interference with local government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Small Heath, has quoted the quite incredible statement made last night in his winding-up speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as reported at c. 1470 of HANSARD—the speech which contained the Chancellor's denunciation of any local authority which deliberately set out, as he put it,
to flaunt the national interest".
His misuse of the word "flaunt" shows that he is illiterate as well as inhuman. The Chancellor went on to say that deliberate action of the kind which he denounced
could well call in question the continuance of the present system of local autonomy over current expenditure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 1470.]
That was an appalling threat to be made by any Chancellor, but it was a particularly appalling threat to be made by


a Chancellor who was Chairman of the Conservative Party when "A Better Tomorrow" was issued three and a half years ago, which included these words:
The independence of local authorities has been seriously eroded by Labour Ministers. On many issues, particularly education and housing, they have deliberately overriden the views of elected councillors. We think it wrong that the balance of power between central and local government should have been distorted and we will redress the balance and increase the independence of local authorities.
The Chairman of the Conservative Party who promised to increase the independence of local authorities is now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who threatens to take away the autonomy of local authorities. I say with deep regret—and I say it with particularly deep regret to the Minister to whom I have to address these words—that the Government have set out deliberately, as is shown by the announcement of the Chancellor on Monday, to create squalor in our great cities. In this aim, unlike most of his other aims, the Chancellor will very likely succeed, but the people of our cities, certainly the people of the city of Manchester, will never forgive him.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. James Allason: The House has listened with great sympathy to the plea by the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) about conditions in Manchester. He spoke first of the programme to deal with urban deprivation and implied there would be cuts, but as that item is on the Home Office Vote it seems a little inappropriate to seek to discuss it at this time. But I sincerely hope that there will be no cuts in that direction.
The hon. Member then spoke of the need for improvement grants and better conditions in housing. I am with him 100 per cent. there, but there is no intention of cutting housing or improvement grants. Improvement grants are expanding year by year and we are very proud of our record in this regard.

Mr. Kaufman: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Manchester is an assisted area, and that at the end of June our improvement grant allocation will be cut by one-third?

Mr. Allason: The grant will be cut by 50 per cent. rather than 75 per cent., except in a housing action area, and I should imagine that the hon. Member's constituency will qualify under that heading. It is somewhat misleading to say that there is to be a cut. It is a question of who pays for it. There is the possibility of insisting on improvements to be carried out by reluctant landlords, and surely the hon. Member will welcome that. I do not know whether in his case it is a reluctant landlord or a reluctant council which is failing to carry out improvements. Nevertheless, he can take courage from the fact that the improvement grant scheme is continuing with vigour.
It is unreasonable to say that no service should be exempt from cuts. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) explained, it is difficult to seize on one service and say that it should take all the cuts. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has had experience in local government and has, no doubt, served on a libraries committee—

Mr. Dennis Howell: Mr. Dennis Howell indicated dissent.

Mr. Allason: Then perhaps my experience of local government is greater than his in that respect. What usually happens is that an estimate is put forward and the librarian says he would like, say £40,000 to spend on new books next year. The committee then cuts it to £30,000 and the librarian looks disgruntled. Nevertheless, £30,000 is a handsome allocation for expenditure on new books. At a time of severe crisis, when everyone in the country is asked to tighten his belt, it is possible to secure considerable savings in the library service through the purchase of books.
When it comes to caring for the sick and the disabled, it is necessary to take a careful look. It may be that there is in next year's estimates an allocation for the replacement of an old minibus. It may be possible to patch up the minibus so that it can go on for another year. That is within a service which the hon. Member for Small Heath says should not in any circumstances be cut.
The hon. Member for Ardwick went somewhat further than the hon. Member for Small Heath, who did not actually


suggest that taxation should be increased and that there should be no cuts in local government expenditure. That was what was said, and I understood the hon. Member for Small Heath to give his approval. It is interesting, if that is the firm view of the Opposition, that they seem to be suggesting that increased taxation should take care of these cuts.

Mr. Denis Howell: I thought I made it clear that we agreed that there was a crisis and we agreed that in the crisis the situation could not be left as it is. The burden of my case against the Government is that on the one hand there will inevitably be increased rates and on the other hand, where cuts have to be made, the Government have been totally nonselective and priorities have not been established. We disapprove of that.

Mr. Allason: We hear from the hon. Member for Small Heath a stirring call against reform and against retrenchment. He resists any attempt to bring local government into the twentieth century, which we shall achieve in 1974. One of his reasons for opposing reform was extravagance in salaries and staffs and in staff numbers. I agree that this is a fair criticism of local government reform, but it is not an argument against reform; it is an argument for getting the thing right.
That was what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment was saying on 30th November. He was saying that it was scandalous that jobs for the boys were being created. I have sent him evidence of jobs being deliberately created so that local government officers should not become redundant. We know that that has happened. My hon. Friend made no threats. He said that local authority costs resulting from such action would be considered carefully, and not least by the ratepayers and by the electors. That was a reasonable thing to say. At least, these increases afford some relief to ratepayers. If these considerable sums were not voted by us tonight, they would fall on the ratepayers. The ratepayers are already thoroughly dissatisfied with this year's level of rates.
As I have already told the House, the rates in Hertfordshire rose in 1972–73 by 15 per cent. over the previous year. In the current year they have risen by an additional 13 per cent. We now hear that

they are likely to rise by 7 per cent. next year. I understand that the increase will be 7 per cent. and not 7p. Let us hope that by the time the 1974–75 financial year reaches us we shall have got rid of some of the current self-inflicted injuries. Let us hope that by then the economic situation may be better. If there is any possibility of relief being offered, I urge that the highest priority be given to consideration of the ratepayers. They are being asked to pay much too much already. Let next year's order substantially increase the domestic element and so help the impoverished ratepayers.

9.23 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Marks: I shall deal in particular with the period covered by the No. 2 Order—namely, 1972–73. That is a period which has been affected by the rate support grant which was debated exactly a year ago. I must echo what the hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones), said about the contributions which were made by the late Martin Maddan to our debates. He took part in the debate of a year ago and made a valuable contribution.
Last year's order was affected by the counter-inflation legislation which started its passage through the House in January of this year. It is important that we consider the effect of the rate support grant orders and the counter-inflation legislation.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer talked yesterday about local authorities which flaunt the national interest. Unconsciously he chose the right word. That is what is done by local authorities. The national interest is the welfare of the people of the nation and not a commitment to what a Prime Minister, a Chancellor or even a majority party which was elected several years ago thinks is the right thing at the right time. It is not in the national interest that the House or the country should accept without question all that a Government say.
In the rate support grant debate a year ago I welcomed what the Minister said. He told us that
the Government are anxious that the level of rates should be held down as an act of deliberate policy in the national interest. If that is the Government's policy, as it is, obviously the Government have to come in to


assist in keeping the rates down to a reasonable level. The Government's immediate policy with regard to rates is to keep the overall rise in rates to a level compatible with the Government's policies on prices and incomes while recognising, of course, that local variations will be inevitable.
He went on in words which could be echoed by us all:
In value for money, rates really are the best buy. Think of all the services which one gets for the rates one pays—roads, schools, sewerage, refuse collection and disposal, street lighting and a host of other services. Therefore, in bringing rates down we must not bring down the quantity or quality of those services."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th December 1972; Vol. 848, c. 1439.]
I believe that the right hon. Gentleman was right in saying that rates are our best buy. The Government had a choice between cuts in public expenditure and cuts in private spending. They have chosen cuts in public expenditure, and I do not think that at heart the right hon. Gentleman can agree with what the Government have done. Public expenditure is the basis of the welfare of our people, and I believe that that is the national interest.
In last year's debate I pointed out several anomalies that had grown up in the rate support grant system which particularly affected large cities and industrial urban areas. I shall not weary the House with a recital of the numerous debates we had in December, January and February of last Session on that problem. The Government now accept that there were anomalies, and they have tried to do something about them in future rate support grants.
The trouble is that during 1973–74 inflation has further exaggerated the problems of those cities. The cost which they have to bear is greater than the cost which the rest of the country has to bear, and the proportion of the increase in rate support grant which they receive is less than that which other areas receive. So the problems have become even more pronounced. Is there no way under existing legislation by which an adjustment can be made to help them? Their rates last year were very high, and they are now faced with the tremendous problem of passing on that burden to next year.
Towns particularly were placed in a difficult position by the Counter-Inflation Act. Hon. Members will recall that

the former Secretary of State for Employment explained Clause 13 of the Counter-Inflation Bill in this way:
I should also refer to Clause 13. This is the new provision under which my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State concerned—for the Environment, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—may obtain information from local authorities about rate demands. The clause will enable the Government to consider whether a rate increase seems unnecessarily large and, if so, to ask the local authority to reconsider the matter. Although the clause contains no powers to compel local authorities to make a new lower rate in place of the one questioned by the appropriate Secretary of State, its provisions make such an alteration possible."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th January 1973; Vol 849, c. 964.]
I am sure that the Minister realised at the time the difficulties in which that clause placed him.
Faced as they were with essential and large increases in expenditure, towns and counties tried hard to reduce their expenditure. We had the spectacle of 12 men in the Department of the Environment trying to monitor the rates of hundreds of local authorities. What does the Minister think of the monitoring system? Does he propose to continue that same system under the Counter-Inflation Act in future?
Although reorganisation does not take place until next April, many of the initial costs of new staffs will already have been expended and other expenses will be placed on this year's rates. A fair rate of increase for administration is set out in the order. Will this sum be large enough?
The cost allowed for by the Government was £396·7 million and the increase in the grant within the Rate Support Grant (Increase) (No. 2) Order is £237·3 million. This means that £159 million must be found from the rates, and this sum has not been allowed for and was not included in last year's estimates. The Government did not anticipate this expenditure and have not taken it into consideration. The present order envisages an increase of 8 per cent. compared with last year's estimates.

Mr. Alec Jones: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that most local authorities have a contingency sum in their estimates which could cover this figure.

Mr. Marks: That is possibly the case with urban districts and some counties.


but the cities and towns cannot work with the same sort of reserves. Each year they face rising inflation, and this order represents 8 per cent. more than was anticipated. In other words, they will have to find 8 per cent. more than the Chancellor allowed for this year, and this figure has not been budgeted for.
I welcome the orders because they reflect an increase and show that the Government accept that inflation has made life very difficult for councils. We must be grateful for small mercies in that the Government have accepted the responsibility for these increases.

9.32 p.m.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: I apologise to the House for coming into the debate at this very late stage, but I have just returned from a committee meeting in Brussels to find the House still discussing the rate support grant. I have a considerable regional interest in the level of rate support grant because the county of Norfolk is affected, not so much by the situation produced by these orders as by the prospect of moving away from the sort of formulae on which the present rate support grant is based.
In view of the overall national situation, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last night exhorted local authorities to keep down any addition to their current expenditure. That is a worthy objective, but we must bear in mind the fact that many local authorities, particularly the new Norfolk authority, which is typical, have a heavy on-going commitment. So much has been added as a result of legislation that new resources will have to be found unless some of the undertakings already given are resiled from.
I wish to instance one or two examples. The degree of administration and staff required to supervise fire precautions has particular relevance in Norfolk because of the large number of hotels, boarding houses and similar establishments in coastal areas. It is fair to say that the county feels that it will be extremely difficult to keep down its future expenditure and therefore its rates if there is any substantial diminution in the rate support grant.
As I understand it, the formula is being changed so that the vital factor of sparsity, which hitherto has meant the

population per mile of road within the authority, will in future become that of density. In other words, the population will be divided into the acreage of the local authority. That is the main factor as a result of which the new county of Norfolk looks like losing some 3·8 per cent. of its present level of grant, and that means a sum of about £1·25 million.
The difficulty is that the computer does not seem to realise the difference between sparsity and density. It is most easily described by comparing two types of area. Let us say 100,000 inhabitants live in 500 square miles. There is the same density of population, namely 200 to the square mile, whether the area is an evenly-inhabited stretch of arable farmland with many scattered villages and small market towns or a large area of uninhabited moorland with a valley in' the middle of it, at either end of which there is a substantial town, with most of the population gathered in centres. A similar situation can occur within the village structure. A typical East Anglian village often stretches along a mile or two of road with a church at one end and a pub at the other. That has to be compared with a village clustered round a green with the population living much closer together.
One can imagine the difference in costs in terms of connections for sewerage or electricity, for refuse collection and for school transport, and the difference in capital costs where no towns or villages are big enough to justify a new school because the population is so thin that the catchment area has to spread over a number of villages. All this adds greatly to costs.
I reflect that this sparsely populated county is none the less amongst the fastest-growing counties in the country. It has the additional numbers without, on the whole, the advantage of scale. The numbers are scattered. In the event of the overloading of a village school or of a local sewage works, it is always on a small scale and the total county problem requires separate remedies in several places.
The final matter worrying us in Norfolk is that the test seems to be changing. It is no longer one of need, which hitherto has been the ingredient in the rate support grant. The new basis is to be


that of previous expenditure. It happens that Norfolk in recent years, in response to Government exhortations to keep down the level of local expenditure, has moved from being one of the counties with rates well above the county average to one of those with rates below the county average. If we now change from a basis of need to one of previous expenditure, the authorities which have co-operated in previous Government policies will be penalised.
Therefore, I must ask my right hon. Friend carefully to reconsider the future formula on which rate support grant is to be based. Certainly, the needs of a county such as Norfolk have increased as a result of expansion and the matters I have mentioned. In particular, will my right hon. Friend distinguish in his formula, and in the Government computer, between density and sparsity? If he will, I think that Norfolk's grant will not be cut to the degree that at present seems likely.

9.41 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: With your leave, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to reply to the debate.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) drew attention first to what he called the terribly expensive reorganisation. Certainly, expense is involved in reorganising local government from 1,400 local authorities to about 400. It has been taken into account in the rate support grant, after full discussion with local authorities, in considering what sort of expenditure both local and central government can expect in the reorganisation.
I do not think that there is any squabble about the figures for the sum taken into account in the rate support grant. I hope that we have given full consideration to what would normally be expected in setting up new authorities from the old authorities. Where our expectations have gone wrong is in connection with staffing. The hon. Gentleman spoke about his anxiety in that regard, and it is my anxiety. I have discussed the matter with individual local authorities very fully in the past few weeks. It seemed that some have been able to devise an establishment which employed no more than the authorities

which had been merged, but in others the establishment has increased by perhaps 50 per cent. over the numbers employed by the authorities which merged to form that district or new county authority.
It is not possible to judge the matter purely by the numbers employed in the previous districts which have been merged or have become the county, because the functions have changed. To study the matter carefully one must examine the functions being undertaken by the new authority and whether it is engaging too great a staff for those functions. I was attracted by the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that a feasibility study should begin at once into the cost of reorganisation from the staffing point of view.
We have probably taken into account the question of new offices. With the need to restrain building, we shall have to do with existing offices. I think that a very close study should be carried out quickly into the establishment of the new authorities. I am sure that the public will expect that a reduction in the number of local authorities from 1,400 to 400 should lead to a streamlining of staff. However, it must be remembered that the functions have changed.
The hon. Member for Small Heath talked about threats being made by Ministers against local government, and he rather associated that with the question of staff increases. What Ministers have been doing is to call the attention of those in local government to the fact that their enthusiasm for local government has in many cases run away with them and that the public will look askance at the increase in salaries and in staff which is occurring in some authorities. Other authorities have been very careful and have carried out the streamlining which is possible.
We propose to issue a circular to local authorities saying not only where cuts can be made in accordance with the requests of the Chancellor of the Exchequer but also that local authorities should show economy in their new staffing.
The hon. Member for Small Heath said that the two-tier system was bound to increase the cost. I do not think so. If we are reducing the number of local


authorities by the figures which I have mentioned, there should be a streamlining in the staffs and a possibility of employing fewer.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not attacking local authorities in his statements concerning local authority expenditure. To use the words he employed, there is at present autonomy in local government over current expenditure. The whole trend—by the previous Government as well as by the present one—is to give local government a greater discretion in the spending of the money which the taxpayer contributes to local government. We have the rate support grant. We are proposing, in the Local Government Bill now before the House, to move a number of other items into the rate support grant and away from specific grants.
When one considers the control which local government has over the amount which the taxpayer contributes, it is only fair for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to point to the responsibility of local government to keep back unnecessary expenditure.

Mr. Marks: Have we not nationally made commitments—I am not talking now about the functions of local authorities—as regards the protection of staffs who lose their jobs as a result of reorganisation? Are not authorities bound to give such staff protection at their existing salaries? Is not this element in this year and next year a very large added commitment for which the individual authorities themselves have not made the decision?

Mr. Page: Central Government was very generous over the question of those who wished to retire from local government in the course of the reorganisation and in the case of redundancies. In many cases I have been personally accused of encouraging the House to be too generous over this. A great number of chief officers have retired at a young age to take up employment elsewhere at better remuneration and drawing their pensions also. Good luck to them. The intention was that we should streamline local government establishments and enable people to find jobs elsewhere.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that

by making this offer—which has been accepted, I think in dramatic numbers-local authorities have lost some wonderful experience that could have been put to good use in the new authorities?

Mr. Page: No, I do not think that. There are enough to go round. We are sorry to lose some of the very experienced town clerks, and so on, but there are still a good number of well experienced ones left to undertake the reorganised local government.
I was dealing with the question of the phrases and words used by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I was pointing out that local government has considerable control over what the taxpayer pays. As right hon. and hon. Members know, the rate support grant is divided into three factors—the domestic element, the resources element and the needs element. The domestic element has been this year a reduction of the rate poundage in any area by 6p. We have said that next year it will be 10p, and on top of that a variable domestic element—variable geographically—given to those authorities who will lose by reduction in resources element or by an increase in the cost of water and sewerage.
This means that the taxpayer comes in as a ratepayer to the extent of that domestic element whether it is 6p or 10p or 10p-plus and comes in at the rate poundage which the local authority chooses to charge. So the local authority has considerable control over what it gets out of the taxpayer on the domestic element. Not only that, but the resources element is taken as the amount by which one local authority falls below a standard line for the country nationally, and by that amount it falls below, again, the Government—that is to say the taxpayer—comes in as a ratepayer at the rate poundage which the local authority chooses to charge.
It was very reasonable, then, for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that local authorities should realise their responsibility in keeping down their expenditure for which they have to call for rates. Indeed, if there were irresponsible local authorities to any great number I would have thought it would be necessary for any Government to reconsider the trend of global grants—rate support grant—and, perhaps, turn the


trend round and go back to specific grants and say "If you wish to spend money on this subject or that subject we shall contribute a certain percentage of that but not leave you discretion on which to calculate your expenditure". I hope we shall not do that. I hope we shall still leave discretion to the local authorities to decide in a responsible way what their expenditure should be and what their needs are from the taxpayer and the ratepayer.
The hon. Member for Small Heath produced a set of figures which had been supplied to him, he said, by the Association of Municipal Corporations, and on those figures he came to the conclusion that the Government had failed to take into account a sum of £164 million, and that there was a shortfall to that extent. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) came rather to the same concluison.
What we are talking about here is the amount of increase in costs during a certain period of time and the increase of costs to local government expenditure. We apply to that the same percentages as applied to the main settlement with the result that 60 per cent. will be contributed by the taxpayer and 40 per cent. by the ratepayer, and the ratepayer will have to pay that 40 per cent. calculated on these figures perfectly correctly. When I say "correctly" I am not being rude to the local authorities in any way, but these are the figures which were agreed between the officials of my Department and the officials of the Association of Municipal Corporations. The ratepayer will contribute to this increase a sum of £164 million, being the 40 per cent., or, taking the earlier years, 42 per cent.; the taxpayer will contribute the rest. This is really not a shortfall but application of the normal procedures to the rate support grant.

Mr. Denis Howell: It still has to be found next year, at a time when the Chancellor is saying that there should not be a penny increase in the rates.

Mr. Page: This is something which is found each year by the local authorities and the taxpayers. My right hon. Friend did not say that there would not be a penny increase in the rates. He said

that there would not be an increase, due to the reductions which he was asking for.
The hon. Member for Small Heath was quite right in saying that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State had mentioned an increase in the domestic rates of probably 7 per cent. This is a fairly low figure compared with the increases we have seen over past years, a deliberate endeavour to keep down the increase in rates which we have seen over each year in the past, and it is based on an inflation figure which has been discussed and agreed with the local authority associations.

Mr. Marks: What is it?

Mr. Page: It is no secret. Looking at these increase orders, we get an inflation figure of about 10 per cent. for last year or for this current year. This has been agreed with the local authority associations. There need not be more than an increase of 7 per cent. in the domestic rates throughout the country.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: My right hon. Friend has referred to an average increase of 7 per cent. in the rates. I remind him that, because of the factors I mentioned earlier, the likely increase in the new Norfolk is pointing towards more than 20 per cent.

Mr. Page: I shall be dealing with my hon. Friend's speech in due course.
The hon. Member for Small Heath talked about an enormous cut-back in the rate support grant and quoted a figure of £182 million. There is still under discussion the figure by which relevant expenditure may be reduced as a result of the cuts proposed, but it is certainly not £182 million. It is not much more than half that figure, I would have thought. The very circumstances in which these cuts are demanded give all the more reason for the expenditure of local authority money on just the sort of social subjects which both the hon. Member for Small Heath and the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) mentioned. I have endeavoured to lay down guidelines.

Mr. Denis Howell: Am I not correct in saying that, after the local authorities had their first discussions with the Government, they were requested to save


about £81 million or £82 million and that now, through the Chancellor's announcement this week, at least a further £100 million is likely to be saved? Therefore, is not the figure which the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting £182 million and not about £90 million?

Mr. Page: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has made his figure clear. The £81 million represented cuts requested last May. They were being taken into account, of course, in the rate support grant discussions. One estimates that the addition brought about by the new cuts will be about £100 million. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I did not appreciate that he was taking into account the £81 million asked for in May. Here we are faced with a situation in which it is necessary for the Government, because of the need to conserve resources, particularly those which demand energy and fuel, to make this cut-back. In making these cuts, the guidelines that I give and have been giving to local authorities come under three headings—

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Motion relating to Ways and Means and the Charlwood and Horley Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Fox.]

RATE SUPPORT GRANT

Question again proposed.

Mr. Graham Page: I was attempting to put these guidelines under three headings. The first is that in making the cuts there should be no reduction in essential services; secondly, that there should be no reduction in the ability to meet emergencies; and, thirdly, that they should look for the area of cuts at projects requiring materials depending for their production on energy and fuel.

Mr. Kaufman: The right hon. Gentleman must surely recall the reply given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris) on Monday, when he said:
If, as we all hope, the industrial troubles are settled soon, certainly there would be no

immediate change in the proposals that I have made."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 976.]
Therefore, regardless of the energy situation, the Chancellor will insist on these cuts in local government services.

Mr. Page: The situation in industry has gone so far by reason of the difficulty over energy and fuel, whether as the result of action overseas or within this country, that we cannot hold out prospects of getting back on to target at any early date. It would be too optimistic to suggest that we could restore these cuts at an early date.
We are calling them cuts, but they are not cuts in existing expenditure or a lowering of standards; they are a slowing up in the rate of growth. About 12 months ago we were hoping that local government would grow at 4½ per cent. a year. These cuts represent a reduction of that 4½ per cent. to 2½ per cent. Growth of 2½ per cent. is still expected in local government. Therefore, these are cuts in anticipated expenditure rather than in real expenditure at this time.
Because we must make these cuts at a time when the country is being asked to make sacrifices by a five-day week with three days of lighting and heating, when people are being asked to make sacrifices in the home by heating only one room, and when there are difficulties regarding transport, and so on, there is all the more reason for local authority money to be spent on social services and helping those who may suffer hardship in these circumstances. That is not the area in which to make the cuts. I know that it makes good reading when reference is made to meals on wheels, the chronically sick, and so on, but that is not the area in which to make the cuts. That will not save energy and fuel.

Mr. Kaufman: Where then?

Mr. Page: In projects which depend on materials which are dependent upon energy and fuel for their production. I am sure that is where the reduction can be found.

Mr. Kaufman: Absolute nonsense.

Mr. Page: I am giving the hon. Gentleman the guidelines that I hope local authorities will adopt in deciding where to make the 20 per cent. cut in capital


and the 10 per cent. cut in current expenditure.
No cuts are required in housing, which includes improvement grants. Therefore, some of the fairy story with which the hon. Member for Ardwick entertained the House is far from the facts. There is no reason for Manchester City or Greater Manchester to reduce its expenditure on housing or on improvements. Because I was anxious to give these sort of guidelines to local authorities, I have arranged about 10 meetings in the regions. I chose Manchester as the first. I visited Manchester yesterday to discuss with the districts of Manchester, with Greater Manchester county and with a number of local authorities in the northern part of Cheshire, and so on, what their problems were and where they could make the reduction without causing hardship to the people. They were very co-operative in considering ways in which this could be done without hardship to the people, who will suffer enough because services have been withdrawn from them.
It is not all the Government's fault that the services have been withdrawn. The hon. Member for Ardwick said that this was all the fault of the Government. He said that it was unnecessary to make any cuts. On that matter he disagreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Small Heath, who said that he thought that the cuts were necessary. The cuts are necessary, but they are not all the Government's fault. If the Government allowed the use of resources to go on indefinitely and unrestricted, they would be blamed for creating greater hardship. I accept the words of the hon. Member for Small Heath when he said that the prime duty, certainly of local government, was to look after the quality of life.
There are certain things which we shall have to look upon as luxuries, which come within the phrase "the quality of life." I am thinking particularly of the Bill dealing with the protection of the environment which is at present in another place. It may well be that we shall have to delay bringing into operation some of the desirable matters that the Bill proposes. We may have thought that it would come into operation on 1st

April next, but it may be next autumn, or something of that sort. But these are new requirements for the environment. We may have to delay some of those.
I assure right hon. and hon. Members that the cuts in central Government expenditure are far more severe than those in local government. My hon. Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) drew attention to the fact that central Government should coordinate more its demands upon local government and not set a target which local government could not achieve unless provided with greater resources from central Government. I hope that I have understood him correctly. That is a point which is frequently raised with me by local authorities—that in central Government we ask them to do more and do not give them the money with which to do it. It is a very sound point. We propose to restrain ourselves in asking local government to do too much.
My hon. Friend asked whether the necessary political decisions on this matter will be made. My answer is certainly in the affirmative. He asked about loan sanctions passed by the Department and not by Ministers. Loan sanctions are to a great extent something of the past. The capital allocation to local authorities is divided between key sector, free sector and the locally determined schemes. The key sector requires loan sanction from the Secretary of State. I assure my hon. Friend that we are looking with great care at the requests for loan sanction in that sphere. Only where there is a risk to public health or where the expenditure is connected with housing are we inclinded to grant that loan sanction at present.
In the free sector we ask local authorities to reduce by 20 per cent. the capital which they commit to projects and, indeed, to do the same when they are financing out of their own resources. The locally determined schemes, which now run at £348 million over the whole country, will be subject to the reduction of the 20 per cent. and then distributed among the counties for distribution over the county area.
I come to what was said by the hon. Member for Ardwick. It is rather frustrating for a Minister, who has worked


for many months on a formula which gives the great cities a distinct advantage over all other areas, to be kicked in the teeth for doing it. The needs formula which has been applied this year gives the cities a very great advantage over the rest of the country in the amounts allocated to them. This was indeed an undertaking of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he met the representatives of the great cities. The result has be en that, given the same size of cake to divide, many areas of the country are contributing towards the advantage gained by the great cities.
It has been necessary to soften the impact in the first year of the new needs factor of the rate support grant, so we have had to introduce further factors to even out the burden falling on other areas, such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill). But given the same size of cake to divide, the other areas of the country have to meet the subsidy to the great cities if we are to keep to our undertaking. We can smooth out the effect by introducing other factors into the formula, and that we are doing in discussion with the local authority associations. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South that the effect is being evened out to a greater extent than he thought.
Within the needs element of the rate support grant there is, of course, the factor of density. My hon. Friend made a distinction between density and sparsity, but the density factor, which is measured in terms of 1·5 acres per head, benefits counties such as Norfolk. I am quite sure my hon. Friend will not find that the formula means an increase of 20 per cent. in the rates. This also answers my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason), who spoke of increased rates in Hertfordshire.
The hon. Member for Gorton asked me about monitoring. There is still power under the statute to monitor the rates again this year. I assure the hon. Member that I found no satisfaction in carrying out the monitoring, although I persuaded local authorities to think again about their rates to the extent of £13 million. I have therefore claimed—I do

not know whether the claim is right—to have saved ratepayers £13 million by the monitoring. But it is not the sort of principle which I enjoy following, and, unless it is absolutely necessary—it is only local authorities which will make it necessary—I do not want to undertake that job again. It helps, of course, to talk over the budgets with local authorities, and that was perhaps the best advantage of monitoring. The central Government got to know what local authorities thought, and local authorities got to know the view of the central Government. There was a kind of co-operation by means of that monitoring.
I think I have covered all the points that were raised in the debate. At one time it was a debate on an increase order. It has turned into a debate on the reductions in local government expenditure and public expenditure. Hon. Members have taken some of the statements by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor out of context, but if those statements are put into their true context of the amount contributed by the central Government to local government, and of the control which local government has to a great extent over that contribution—and certainly the control which it has over the rate poundage which it collects—it becomes clear that it was right for my right hon. Friend to ask the local authorities to look to their responsibility in that respect.
Of course, my right hon. Friend does not need to ask many of the local authorities to do so. They are responsible bodies, and the whole policy of the Government has been to give them more and more responsibility. There are some, however, which need reminding, and that is what my right hon. Friend has done.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) (No. 1) Order 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.

Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) (No. 2) Order 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.—[Mr. Graham Page.]

WAYS AND MEANS

INDEPENDENT BROADCASTING AUTHORITY

10.17 p.m.

The Minister of Posts and Telecommunications (Sir John Eden): I beg to move,
That it is expedient to make further provision as to the payments to be made to the Independent Broadcasting Authority by television programme contractors, including provision authorising or requiring the Authority to contract with programme contractors for payments to the Authority and provision for the whole or any part of those payments to be paid, directly or indirectly, into the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or the Exchequer of Northern Ireland, and to provide for other matters supplementary thereto.
In a Written Answer on 23rd July 1973 I announced that discussions were being put in hand for the preparation of legislation to change from receipts to profits the base on which the independent television levy was charged. Those discussions have now been completed, and the motion seeks authority to introduce a Bill to give effect to the conclusions reached.
The percentages which it is proposed the Bill should prescribe were announced today in a Written Answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke). If the House agrees to the motion there will, of course, be full opportunity to discuss the contents of the Bill, which are somewhat complicated, when it comes forward for debate.

Mr. John Grant: I have only one question which I should like answered before we allow the motion to go through. Will the Minister give us the estimated cash yield to the IBA in a full year as a result of the proposed change? We know that there have been protracted consultations and negotiations and that some of the television companies were at one stage most unhappy with the situation. Indeed, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were both involved.

Sir J. Eden: If I may reply with the leave of the House, it is of course impossible to give a specific answer to the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. John Grant) because his question is

directed at what might happen in the future. As I indicated, the Bill is complex only in so far as its provisions are somewhat complicated and we should need to study their full ramifications in relation to the activities of the individual companies to be able to do justice to the hon. Member's question. I can indicate a broad order of magnitude. If the system which is outlined in the terms of the Bill which I hope to have leave to introduce to the House had been applied to 1972–73, the outcome would have been an increase of £11 million on the yield of approximately £22 million, making £33 million in all.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to make further provision as to the payments to be made to the Independent Broadcasting Authority by television programme contractors, including provision authorising or requiring the Authority to contract with programme contractors for payments to the Authority and provision for the whole or any part of those payments to be paid, directly or indirectly, into the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or the Exchequer of Northern Ireland, and to provide for other matters supplementary thereto.
Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said resolution by the Chairman of Ways and Means, Sir John Eden and Mr. Patrick Jenkin.

INDEPENDENT BROADCASTING AUTHORITY

Bill to make further provision as to the payments to be made to the Independent Broadcasting Authority by television programme contractors; and for purposes connected therewith; presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 60.]

INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS (LAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 66 (Second Reading Committees), That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committtd to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

CHARLWOOD AND HORLEY (RE-COMMITTED) BILL

Considered in Committee [Progress. 19th December].

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

SUPPLEMENTARY.

10.23 p.m.

Mr. Ted Leadbitter: I beg to move Amendment No. 14, in page 3, line 14, after 'appropriate', insert
'including a poll of the inhabitants'.
We had a first-class and detailed debate on Clause 1 last night. It is not my intention to prolong the proceedings tonight. We want to make progress and, because of the seasonal situation, I am as anxious as everyone else to accommodate the House. On a matter of great importance involving the alteration of electoral areas and the specifying of numbers of councillors involved in local government reorganisation, why is there no provision for consultation? Will the Minister give an assurance that there will be included a poll of the inhabitants?
The Minister has made great play during the process of the Bill on the ground of new thinking. That new thinking arose out of a poll. We have had our conflict on the preceding poll. We have put that behind us. There is a radical change to the position which we had in Committee on the Local Government Bill arising from an assurance that opinion would be taken into account. Now that we have the Bill which has come about as the result of public opinion, what follows should be pursued in accordance with criteria laid down by the Minister. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that he has valid reasons for not including a poll on the matters contained in the clause.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I support my hon. Friend the Member for

The Hartlepools (Mr. Leadbitter). The clause refers to the Secretary of State carrying out
such consultation as he thinks appropriate".
Who does the Minister think should be consulted? Will the consultations differ from consultations in other areas? The Minister knows our argument about the poll and we need not go over that ground. Is not this an opportunity to embark on an experiment in local government which the House should take?

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I have to resist the amendment on the ground that once the change has been made to the local government boundaries in this area—as I hope it will be under the Bill—it should be as if that had occurred under the Local Government Act 1972. I explained to the Committee why the boundaries as set out in the Bill were not included in the Act of 1972. The Bill is an endeavour to put the Act right. Once the Act has been put right we should abide by its provisions. That is what the clause does.
The provisions as to consultation in Clause 2(2) follow exactly those in the Local Government Act 1972. The House of Commons found them reasonably satisfactory and they should apply once we make the alteration of the boundaries. The bodies to be consulted are the local authorities, county, district and parish, which are involved in the change; the parish was consulted on this occasion. One might say that that is the right and proper form of consultation if a change is being made in a parish boundary. One would seek the views of the parish council, and if the parish council wished to take the view of its parish meeting it would do so. That would be in the nature of a poll.
If it were a change in a district boundary, the district council would be the right body to consult. The members of the district council are elected to govern their area and it would be right for the Secretary of State to consult the district council and, of course, the county in so far as it was involved. Those are the bodies who have been consulted previously on the alteration of boundaries. The provisions are now new in law. They have been applied previously in boundary changes and have stood the test of time.
We must leave it to the secretary or State at the time to consider what consultations should be undertaken, and if he does not undertake the right consultations he is answerable to the House of Commons.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Leadbitter: We have had elections under the Local Government Bill, but the Bill before us is not yet an Act of Parliament. The transitional period has brought about a situation which Lord Garnsworthy in the other place and others have described as unique. The changeover will take place only several weeks before the operative date for the coming into force of the new system of local government, namely April 1974.
Therefore, can the Minister give an assurance that there will be no "horse-trading" where differing interests are involved in terms of elected members of the non-metropolitan councils? It is obvious that conflicts of interests could arise. I hope that the Minister will consider widening the consultations beyond those he has already indicated, especially if conflicts in, say, Horley and Charlwood are not solved within a reasonable time and to the Secretary of State's satisfaction.

Mr. Graham Page: It is a reasonable request that we should look at these questions and not be hidebound in consulting only the local authorities concerned. We shall consult those authorities primarily since they are the elected representatives, but if there is any substantial alteration it may be right to consult further than the local authorities themselves. This is a hypothetical situation. A Secretary of State would wish to be certain that it was right to make alterations and would consult widely.

Mr. Leadbitter: I am satisfied with what the Minister says. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Leadbitter: I beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 3, line 14, after 'instrument', insert
'and subject to approval by affirmative resolution of this House'.
We now come to a point of some importance which concerns whether the procedure to be followed involves an

affirmative or negative resolution of the House. I feel I must take some care in dealing with this point because, since the last edition of Erskine May was printed, the Select Committee on Stautory Instruments has established new procedures in respect of affirmative and negative resolutions. Although the Joint Committee on Delegated Legislation in the first instance examines orders with great care in terms of their propriety and legal framework, there still arises the question by which resolution the matter should be covered.
The Minister may well be able to give us an assurance that the second stage of the changes laid down in the procedural requirements in Erskine May is satisfied by the establishment of Standing Committees for the examination of the instrument beyond the points of propriety and the legal sense of the instrument. But I must counter that by suggesting that taking an instrument, which is subject to the negative procedure, before a Standing Committee takes away from the House its powers to examine it.
So far as I am aware, the affirmative procedure is to indicate the importance of an instrument. The test is that the Government have to bring it before the House. That test is supported by the fact that parliamentary practice has established that that procedure is adopted when matters of substance and important portions of delegated legislation need to have a high degree of scrutiny. That does not apply to the negative procedure, even though in Standing Committee, because the matter is closed in Standing Committee.
Even so, the outstanding objection is that finally the negative procedure, having gone through the steps I have outlined, is still subject to catching the attention of an hon. Member. We all know what happens. Labour Governments as well as Conservative Governments have used the lateness of the hour to get by the ordinary Member, who has perhaps not been so careful as he might have been, or has been so busy that he has not noticed a statutory instrument in time to put down a Prayer to seek its annulment.
We are dealing with a matter which concerns people very much. I can see that the questions of deciding electoral


areas and specifying the numbers of councillors and times of elections are matters which can follow the areas of consultation which the Minister has described. I readily accept that now. The corollary is that the end product of the exercise and related matters should come before the House on the affirmative procedure.
The affirmative procedure enables the House of Commons to fulfil its traditional rôle. We proceed on the basis that the Government must bring their order to the House. The Government having come to the House of Commons, they must submit the order to a debate lasting at least 1½ hours after 10 p.m., no matter what the business may be and no matter what Standing Order is invoked to interfere with the business during the day. Even though there is a debate under Standing Order No 9, which occupies some hours during the day, the affirmative procedure enables the House of Commons to debate an order for 1½ hours.
Not so with the negative procedure. I concede that the Select Committee on Procedure has done much to try to deal with the difficulty, but we must make it clear that no matter what happens in the Joint Committee and the Standing Committee, once a statutory instrument becomes subject to the negative procedure the debate is closed at 11.30 p.m. The business could carry on till 11·25 p.m. and we would be left with only five minutes. The usual channels ensure that "a Nelson" is done and it is forgotten about, but a back bencher who feels seriously about the matter must be very much awake; and he has only five minutes to deal with it.
I am ready to accept the Minister's good intentions as to enlarging areas of consultation, should that be required. After that, when we have to deal with specific statutory instruments the right thing to do, when it involves the public and electoral matters, is to employ the affirmative procedure.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: Here again, we are following the procedure which was adopted in the Local Government Act 1972 and which was accepted by the House of Commons at that time. The provisions in Clause 2(2) of this Bill as

to consultation follow exactly those in the 1972 Act. Clause 2(2) provides for the Secretary of State's order to be subject to no parliamentary procedure, not even the negative procedure. This is not a question as to whether it should be the affirmative or negative procedure. It is a statutory instrument. The invariable practice in reorganisation Bills of this sort has been that the order is made without formal parliamentary procedure. We consider that there should be no change in this case.
The hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. Leadbitter) has discussed the procedure we now have for dealing with instruments under the affirmative procedure and under the negative procedure. The way one would endeavour to bring a statutory instrument of the sort mentioned by Clause 2(2) before the House would be by an Early Day Motion and persuading the usual channels to accept a motion, perhaps. But this would be the only way to bring an instrument of this sort before the House. I do not think the House should necessarily need, unless there is something going very wrong on the matter, to debate an order of this sort.
Perhaps it would be a good thing to put on record just what is to happen. We did not describe it fully on Clause 1. What we are dealing with under Clause 2 is the need of the Secretary of State to make the decisions on electoral areas for the elections which are required under Clause 1. First, we have, by Clause 1, decided what elections there shall be, and I should like to put them on record.
There will have to be by-elections for new parish councillors for Charlwood; for new parish councillors for Horley No. 3 Ward—not for the other two wards; new district councillors for Horley on the Reigate and Banstead District Council; new district councillors for Sal-fords and Sidlow on the Reigate and Banstead District Council; a new district councillor for Charlwood on the Mole Valley District Council; a new district councillor for Horley and Salfords and Sidlow on the new Surrey County Council; and a new county councillor for the new Dorking division, now including Charlwood. The areas of Charlwood and Horley to remain in West Sussex are too


small to be separate divisions and they will be added to existing divisions.
Particularly in the last case, these are matters which would be dealt with by statutory instrument under Clause 2(2), but in all these cases the electoral wards have to be decided for all the councillors to be elected. This, as in the past, is a matter between the Home Secretary and the people of the district. Perhaps I may point out, without going back to the previous amendment, that now that we have decided where the elections have to take place, what is happening is that public comment has been invited, including comments from the political parties, and these will be considered by an independent committee which will advise the Home Secretary as to the course to be taken.
I think the public are fully protected in this and that it is not a matter which we should be obliged to debate in the House. If, of course, anything goes disastrously wrong with it, I have no doubt that hon. Members will hear about it and will make the Home Secretary responsible by calling him to answer in the House. On these grounds, I would not wish to alter the invariable practice as laid down in this Clause for setting out the electoral areas.

Mr. Leadbitter: The Minister has said the right thing in the sense that he has placed these matters on record. I am glad that he has done so. The sense of the clause is now on record and I am satisfied that it will perhaps save time in future in a way which would not have been possible if it had not been on the record. For this reason, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I beg to move Amendment No. 16, in page 3, line 16, leave out 'or altering'.

The First Deputy Chairman: With this we can properly discuss the following amendments:
No. 17, in page 3, line 18, leave out 'or altered'.
No. 19, in page 3, line 24, leave out paragraph (d).

Mr. Cocks: Amendments Nos. 16 and 17 seek to remove what appear to be

superfluous words which do not seem to add to the sense of the clause.

Amendment No. 19 is possibly a more substantial matter, with which I hope the Minister will deal, because it seeks the deletion of paragraph (d),
assigning existing councillors to any new or altered electoral area".

The Minister will recall that this was one of the matters referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) on Second Reading, in a speech which we all enjoyed, when, talking about points which he felt should be dealt with in Committee on Clauses 1 and 2, he said:
As a point of principle, the Bill should lay down clearly—if we do not do so, the Select Committee will"—

that was rather wishful thinking; that was before the Department of the Environment had mugged the petitioners who were attempting to put forward their case—
that new councillors for the affected areas should be chosen as a result of a further election. I should like clarification from the Minister that all councillors at county, district and parish level for all the areas affected will … be elected by fresh elections; otherwise"—

this is the point to which I draw particular attention—
it will be parliamentary intervention in local elections and the creation by Parliament of councillors in office who were not elected by those whom they will in future serve."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November 1973; Vol. 864, c. 448–9.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Widnes raised a substantial point. If there is any purpose in a Committee stage, it is to make clear that parliamentary intervention should not take place and impose on people representatives whom they have not directly chosen.

Mr. Graham Page: This would be intervention in the sense indicated by the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks), but it is intervention to assist the local authorities and local government units concerned rapidly to carry out the elections of their councillors and see that the electoral areas on which those elections are based are correct.

Clause 2(2) gives the Home Secretary power to prescribe electoral arrangements which may involve altering existing electoral areas as well as creating new ones.


It would be wrong to remove the power to alter and leave merely the power to create. The assigning of existing councillors to electoral areas which are only slightly altered may be involved. If the Home Secretary took it upon himself to make substantial alterations by an order of this kind I have no doubt that he would be called to book by hon. Members responsible in this House for that particular constituency.

The clause gives considerable discretion to the Home Secretary, but this is common practice. It has been used for many years in local government reorganisation after both borough re-warding and new county electoral divisions have been devised.

I can give the hon. Gentleman the effect of what is in contemplation here in altering the electoral areas as they now stand. The numbers of electors to be added to the three electoral divisions and three wards are 188, 167 and 44 respectively. These are small figures compared with the totals for those areas. However, I agree that this is deliberate action by the central Government to put a certain number of electors into a particular electoral area. To that extent it may sound very dictatorial. But no one will do that unless it is to the benefit of the areas concerned and satisfactory to them.

In this particular case, and on the sort of figures I was giving in the small areas, the assignment has been proposed in local consultations and seems right in the circumstances. Therefore, if it has worked out all right in this particular case with the authorities concerned, I think that we should leave the power to the Home Secretary. It has been used in other cases without complaint, because it has always been used with full consultation. With that explanation, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not press the amendment.

Mr. Cocks: I listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman said. I shall faithfully report to my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes), who was concerned about this point. If he feels that the Minister's explanation is unsatisfactory, no doubt he will take appropriate action in another place. In view of what the right hon. Gentleman

said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I beg to move, Amendment No. 23, in page 4, line 4. leave out subsection (7) and insert—
'(7) All resolutions passed before 1st July 1974 shall be binding on the council'.
This is a probing amendment. I have wrestled with this subsection (7). I have done my best with it. In the subsection in the Bill there is not a full stop in nine lines of print, until the end. We are trying to encourage interest in local government and legislation, and the words that I have suggested as a substitute might meet the case. I should like to hear the Minister's comments on the matter.

Mr. Graham Page: I, too, wrestled with subsection (7) when it was presented to me by the parliamentary draftsmen. I knew what I wanted. I tried to find out whether it was in the clause. I was assured that it was, and that it was not possible to reduce the wording.
The purpose of subsection (7) is to require a district council affected by the Bill to postpone exercising its option over whether it should have whole council elections or elections by thirds until after 1st July 1974, by which date the new councils—provided that the House allows us to have the Bill in a short time—will have been elected under the Bill. It is clearly wrong that a council should be able to exercise this important option before it has on it the councillors for whom the Bill provides. All that we are doing is saying to the district council, "Hold your hand. There are more councillors coming on to your council who will want, perhaps, to make their voices heard on whether in future there should be whole council elections or elections by thirds." For that reason we are saying that any resolution before those new councillors come on to the council should be ineffective.
But, as the hon. Gentleman will see, as recompense for that we have extended the period in which that option can be made. It does not have to be made until 1st January 1975, so between 1st July 1974 and 1st January 1975 the council can decide whether it shall have in future whole council elections or elections by


thirds. That means that the new councillors will be there to make their voices heard in any debate on that subject.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Michael Cocks: The Minister becomes more and more reasonable, although he has taken a battering today and still has an adjournment debate to face up to. I feel that if he ever comes back on this earth in another form he should come back as a parliamentary draftsman, because he has clarified the situation wonderfully well and I am quite happy with what he said. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without amendment; to be read the Third time tomorrow.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Gray.]

RECREATION AREA (HOUGH)

11.1 p.m.

Mr. John Biffen: On the motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 1, I am very pleased to raise the subject of the provision of a recreation area in the parish of Hough. I should say at the outset that I am raising this topic at the request of my right hon. Friend the Member for Nantwich (Sir R. Grant-Ferris), in whose constituency this parish falls, for it is essentially a matter concerning the Hough Parish Council and the rural district of Nantwich and in no way touches upon the interests of Shropshire or of the Oswestry constituency. I am indebted to both the chairman of the Hough Parish Council, Mrs. Brereton, and to the representative of Hough on the Nantwich Rural District Council, Mrs. Hill, for the background information that has been given to me on a topic which has caused, and continues to cause, widespread concern in the locality of Hough.
The background of this problem is fairly simply this. Hough Common, which is approximately 4 acres in area, was once used as a tip by the Nantwich Rural District Council and was acquired by the Hough Parish Council under the Commons Registration Act 1965. Since Hough is a village which is scheduled for growth under the county plan, it is not surprising—indeed it is appropriate—that there was a decision by the parish to seek to use this common land, which hitherto had been somewhat unsightly, as a recreation area to provide amenities which would be commensurate with the expected growth of the village. A plan was devised, costing approximately £7,000, which would have as its objective the conversion of the common into a first-class recreation area. What has led to this subject now being ventilated on the Floor of the House of Commons is the tangled and frustrating story of the relationships between the parish and the Nantwich Rural District Council.
In March 1972 the clerk to the Nantwich Rural District Council, as a result of representations that had been made from the parish council, offered to carry out work to improve the appearance of Hough Common under the special Environmental Assistance Scheme. A site meeting was therefore held on 16th April involving representatives of the parish and the deputy engineer of the Nantwich Rural District Council. As a consequence, a scheme was approved by the finance and general purposes committee of the rural district council at its subsequent meeting in May. A further meeting was held on 18th August 1972. In part, ostensibly because the council engineer and surveyor would not be able to supervise the scheme, he being—so it was, I am sure, quite correctly alleged—too busy on the problems of local government reform, a landscape consultant was employed to do the job.
A most important point in the catalogue of events is the meeting that subsequently took place attended by the clerk of Hough Parish Council, the deputy clerk of Nantwich Rural District Council, the deputy engineer and the landscape consultant. Notes of that meeting were made by the clerk of the Hough Parish Council. They indicate that she was under the impression that the Hough scheme had not been altered in any way


from the original proposals which would have improved the totality of the common and that the scheme as originally conceived would be executed for the sum of £7,690. The clerk of the parish council wrote to the rural district council on 25th August confirming such an understanding.
However, in January 1973 the parish council learned via the contractor that work was being carried out on only part of the common land which had originally been involved in the scheme. There was a local reaction that work of this character on that limited area could not conceivably merit the proposed expenditure of upwards of £7,000. The deputy engineer was therefore contacted and he then informed the clerk of the rural district council that further work was needed to bring the scheme into line with that which had been originally agreed. The clerk riposted that the parish might be expected to bear additional expenses incurred. Then followed correspondence, part of which was a letter of 27th March written by the parish council in which the comment was made that
The work that has already been undertaken is certainly not in accordance with the plan submitted and definitely does not warrant the cost involved.
The story thereafter is one of fruitless correspondence between Hough Parish Council and the clerk of the Nantwich Rural District Council. I am informed that the chairman of the finance and general purpose committee of the rural district council declined to put the matter on his committee's agenda on the advice of the clerk of the council.
On 5th April 1973 a delegation from the parish visited Nantwich Rural District Council offices. It sought in vain to gain audience with the clerk. On 6th April the Hough Parish Council wrote to the Department of the Environment at its Manchester office. It said that the scheme as it was being executed was a waste of public funds. Continued attempts were made to have the matter discussed by the rural district council. The clerk advised the chairman of the council not to have the subject put on the council agenda.
On 15th May the landscape consultant, Mr. Blayney, met the parish council. When confronted by its representations, he said that the work could be extended to cover the area as originally conceived

by the parishioners. He said that the work would have to be hurried along because the grant expired on 30th September.
I am sure it will not come as a totally shattering revelation to my right hon. Friend the Minister when I say that there was spasmodic work during the summer. On 4th October the deputy engineer of the Nantwich Rural District Council informed the chairman of the Hough Parish Council that the scheme would not be completed and that the landscape consultant had been criticised by the clerk of the rural district council for issuing instructions to the contractor to carry out work which did not have the formal approval of the council.
The Hough Parish Council complained again to the Department of the Environment. It said that there had been a waste of public funds. I have not been able to give to my right hon. Friend a full and documented history of all the frustrated attempts by the Hough Parish Council and by the rural district council representative to have the facts debated fully and fairly within the Nantwich Rural District Council.
The present situation is almost Gilbertian. Half the site which was within the ambit of the parish council's original scheme is levelled, drained and seeded. The other half is in a somewhat dilapidated state. The rubbish and scrub has been removed, but there has been no infilling, no levelling and no drainage; no fence has been erected. It was an integral part of the scheme to make it a satisfactory recreation area. The siting of the proposed fence is wholly inappropriate and is a matter of mockery within the village.
There is at stake substantial local resentment and indignation. There is indignation that the Department of the Environment should not ensure that upwards of £7,000 has been properly spent. There is understandable indignation, which is tinged with anxiety that the Department should not ensure that the Hough parishioners should get a scheme for a recreational area that the parish council had originally envisaged and countenanced. The parish council says that there should be a full-ranging inquiry to satisfy not merely the council but the taxpayers that the money will be directed


to the purpose that was originally intended.
It was often argued that much of the underlying strength of this country lay upon the potential of each village having its Hampden and being able to produce someone who would argue for the libertarian issues as Hampden argued in this assembly generations ago, but in this instance we have not only village Hampdens but village Gladstones who want to see public funds used prudently for the purpose for which they were truly intended and who are confronted on a small scale with the misapplication of funds. They have evidence of a local but easily identifiable issue which is of national concern—namely, that in the days when so much money is voted for public use it should be most effectively disposed.
I hope, therefore, that when my right hon. Friend answers the debate—I know he cannot answer the whole range of questions implicit in what I have said—he will indicate that the Department is aware of the grave anxieties that are felt in the parish about public moneys not being devoted as they most appropriately should be devoted and about the benefit to the villagers not being as they expected. In that sense I am delighted to raise this topic on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Nantwich, and I look forward to the reply of my right hon. Friend the Minister in a reasonable state of expectation.

11.17 p.m.

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): This matter is very apt for an Adjournment debate in that it is one of local concern yet has within it a considerable amount of principle. My hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) has expressed anxiety on behalf of Hough Parish Council that in its view the scheme that has been carried out is not the scheme that it considered was originally authorised. I understand that the parish council alleges that there has been maladministration and asks the Department of the Environment to ensure that an inquiry is held into what is alleged to have gone wrong.
In a debate of this sort one hears only one side of the case, and I must

rely for the facts on what my hon. Friend says, but there may well be an explanation on the other side by the Nantwich Rural District Council. It is sad to find at the root of the problem a dispute between a rural district council and a parish council. In our reform of local government we have relied to a great extent on the grass roots of the parish council bringing forward the feelings of its people to the larger local government unit, the district council. It is disappointing when bringing forward the feelings and views of the parishioners results only in a dispute between the two local government units.
The facts as I know them are scanty, and my hon. Friend has filled in many of them for me. I understand that the scheme was for tidying up Hough Common. It was submitted by consultant architects on behalf of Nantwich Rural District Council, the body responsible for the work being carried out. It was submitted to my Department under the special Environmental Assistance Scheme, which is the rather more formal description of Operation Eyesore.
What we are talking about here is one of the items in the great scheme of Operation Eyesore which has brought so much satisfaction to the country in clearing up untidy land and eyesores. It has been tremendously successful throughout the country—in fact, so successful that we could no longer leave it as an open-ended matter for local authorities to carry out, because the scheme was running away with the expenditure. However, it has achieved much throughout the country and I wish that this scheme which we are debating had had the success that others have had.
The scheme, as the Department understood it, consisted of site levelling, clearance of scrub and undergrowth, the clearing of trees, seeding and drainage. That was approved under Operation Eyesore for a grant on 31st August 1972. The total cost which was approved for grant was £7,790. I think my hon. Friend mentioned a figure of £7,690. On that sum of £7,790 approval was given for a grant of 75 per cent. That is the normal grant under Operation Eyesore. The grant was payable only in respect of those items which I have mentioned, not for any specific future use of the common but just for carrying out work under those items.
The rural district council was, of course, responsible for the scheme. So far as the grant is concerned, the transaction was between my Department and the rural district council, and the grant was payable to the rural district council. We knew nothing of the arrangement between the parish council and the rural district council or their expectations. Indeed, I do not think we would have been right to look behind the request by the rural district council for this grant. The members of the rural district council were the people responsible for putting up the scheme to my Department, and it was to them that my Department was responsible for paying the 75 per cent. grant. So far as we are aware, the work was completed by 30th September 1973. That was when Operation Eyesore came to an end and the time by which the work had to be completed in order to qualify for a grant.
We received the certificate of the rural district council that the work for which the grant had been ready to be paid had been completed. Having that certificate from the rural district council, we paid the grant. So far as we knew from that certificate, the work had been carried out in accordance with the plans which we had approved in offering the grant. It would have been very difficult throughout Operation Eyesore for the Department to go and examine every scheme to see that it had been carried out in accordance with the application and in accordance with the offer of grant. It would be quite impossible to staff an operation of that sort. So we have to take, as I think we are safe in taking in 99·9 per cent. of the cases, a certificate by the responsible local authority to which the grant is to be paid.
I can understand the indignation of the parish council that the money has not, in its view, been properly spent. But the question here is not what the parish council was promised or understood it had been promised by the rural district council. The point, so far as I am concerned, is on what we had offered the grant and whether that work has been carried out.
My hon. Friend has put a doubt in my mind as to whether there may have been some mistake over the certificate granted that the work had been completed

and whether, as a result, in relying on that certificate, we paid money for work which was not done in accordance with the first application for the grant and in accordance with what we thought we were paying the money for. To that extent I shall ask the rural district council whether there is any justification for the allegation that its certificate to us was wrong and that it has collected money wrongfully from us.

Mr. Biffen: When my right hon. Friend makes that inquiry, will he at the same time seek evidence from Hough Parish Council?

Mr. Graham Page: My hon. Friend has put Hough Parish Council's case tonight, so far as time would allow. There may well be documentation which we should be shown in respect of what he has told the House. But what I do not want to do, and what I cannot possibly say I shall do, is hold any sort of formal inquiry, bringing the two parties together before an inspector, or something of that sort. That is not in accordance with our policy towards local government now.
We do not wish to act as big brother towards any local authority. All we need to do here is see whether a grant, for which the taxpayer has paid, has been properly paid. We have relied on certain assurances in making that payment, and when those assurances are brought into question I must, of course, ask some questions about it. But I could not promise to hold any formal inquiry.
I remind my hon. Friend in passing that there is now going through the House a Bill under which we propose to set up ombudsmen to look into maladministration by local authorities. Perhaps he and I will not be involved in Adjournment debates of this sort when that Bill receives the approval of the House. That might be the right place to raise such a complaint as this in future. At present, however, the Department of the Environment is not a body for inquiring into maladministration by local authorities. They are responsible to their ratepayers for administration in their districts. However, where some process of payment of grant by my Department is involved, if I am told by my hon. Friend that we may have paid it wrongly. I must make some inquiries.
As soon as I have the answer to those inquiries I shall inform my hon. Friend and discuss the matter further with him. I regret that I cannot take it further tonight, and I hope that what I have said will satisfy him on a matter which, as I said at the outset, though a local dispute—a very local matter, for what could be more local than a common in a parish—nevertheless raises a point of principle, involving disagreement between a parish council and a district council.
In future we shall rely very much on the parish councils—not only the existing parish councils in rural districts but the successor parish councils which we are creating—to perform the function of making the people's voice heard, and I therefore hope that we shall be able to avoid disputes of this kind hereafter.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Eleven o'clock.